J&K TEACHER HELD FOR ABETTING TERRORISM

A schoolteacher who was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) from Jammu and Kashmir’s northern Bandipore district earlier this week on charges of helping a West Bengal woman in abetting terrorism in various parts of the country at the behest of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) is likely to be flown out of the Valley for further interrogation, the sources here said.

The NIA had on Thursday said that the alleged LeT ‘recruiter’ Altaf Ahmed Rather was arrested by it from his native village in Bandipore in a case being investigated by it for the past one year.

The case relates to the arrest of one Tania Parveen, a resident of West Bengal, by the concerned police for her alleged association with LeT. An FIR in this regard was registered at the Police Station Badurai in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district under various sections of Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 and Information Technology Act.

The NIA had re-registered the case against the accused at New Delhi on April 5, 2020 and took over the investigation of the case. Later the agency filed a chargesheet against Parveen.

It said that the probe has revealed that Rather, a schoolteacher in Bandipora, was a sympathiser of the LeT.