Terror funding: 4 arrested for selling Pak MBBS seats
A counter-intelligence wing of J&K police has arrested four persons, including a former militant commander-turnedpolitical activist, on charges of “selling” medical seats in various institutions in Pakistan to aspiring students back home for personal benefits and terror funding.
Under various schemes of the Pakistan government, scholarships are offered for MBBS and engineering seats to J&K students — mainly the wards of “victims of violence”. Also, six per cent of medical seats are reserved for students of J&K in PoK medical colleges.
On average, about two dozen students from J&K were granted admissions in these colleges annually until the UGC issued an advisory in May 2019, asking students from the erstwhile state not to seek admissions in professional colleges and other educational institutions in PoK, asserting the territory is an integral part of
India and educational institutions there have neither been established by Government of India nor are these recognised by it or the country’s other statutory authorities such as AICTE and Medical Council of India (MCI).
The NIA had earlier in its chargesheet on alleged terror funding in J&K filed in a court in January 2018 claimed that Pakistan is offering scholarships to Kashmiri students “in order to prepare a generation of doctors and technocrats in Kashmir who will have leanings towards Pakistan”.
Now the counter-intelligence Kashmir (CIK) wing of the J&K police has alleged that some of these seats were being “sold” to aspiring students against huge sums of money which would be used for personal benefit and partly for terror funding.
The CIK said that it had registered a case in this connection in May last year. Those arrested include Mohammad Akbar Bhat alias Zaffar Akbar Bhat, chairman of J&K Salvation Movement,
Fatima Shah, a resident of Palhalan, Pattan (Baramulla district), Mohammad Abdullah Shah from north-western Kupwara district and Sabzar Ahmad Sheikh, a resident of Nowgam, Shangus (Anantnag district). The other accused are Altaf Ahmed Bhat and Manzoor Ahmed Shah who had migrated to Pakistan in the early 1990s and are presently living in Bahria Town (Karachi) and Gulmohar Colony (Rawalpindi), respectively. Altaf Bhat is a brother of Zaffar Akbar Bhat and Manzoor Shah that of Muhammad Abdullah Shah.
The CIK claimed that after crossing over to the other side of LoC for receiving arms training, the duo “played a key role on behalf of ISI in facilitating matter pertaining to admissions under this category for this set of Hurriyat linked persons on Indian side” and were “part of nefarious design of pumping money into the militancy and other terrorist-related activities”.