Two more arrested by NIA in Jammu; Separatist hold protest in Srinagar
Srinagar: The National Investigating Agency (NIA) which is probing the alleged terror funding in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday arrested two more persons from winter capital Jammu.
The accused have been identified as Zahoor Ahmed Peer and Nazir Ahmed Peer. Both of them are residents of frontier Kupwara district. They have been accused of providing logistic support to a Lashkar-e-Taiba militant Abu Ali after he had sneaked into Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir a couple of years ago.
Ali was arrested by the Army during a search operation in Kupwara’s Yahama village in July 2016 and has, during his interrogation, reportedly revealed that the accused had helped him during his stay in the area. The Army had claimed having recovered three AK-47 rifles, two pistols and Rs. 23,000 in Indian currency from Ali.
Meanwhile, a Delhi court on Tuesday remanded Kashmiri photojournalist Kamran Yousuf and another Valley youth Javed Ahmad to judicial custody till October 17. They were arrested by the NIA on September 5 from Kashmir’s southern Pulwama and Kulgam districts, respectively in connection with the probe into terror and stone-pelting funding and alleged misuse of social media to stir up violence in the Valley.
During the in-camera proceedings, District Judge Poonam Bamba remanded Kamran and Javed to judicial custody after they were produced before the court on expiry of their NIA custody.
Later during the day, an alliance of key separatist leaders- Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik- once again condemned the raids and arrests being made by the NIA. Its activists held a protest demonstration in Srinagar and accused the agency of “putting common people in jails”. It also accused the Centre of trying to brow beat the separatist leadership and its supporters and said that “intimidation through NIA tantamount to the trampling democratic and human norms.”
The fresh arrests were made by the NIA and protest demonstration held by separatists amid a report suggesting that the agency has secured recorded confessional statements on the flow of money, especially from Pakistan, from two persons accused in the case related to the alleged terror funding in Kashmir.
The report filed by Press Trust of India while quoting unnamed NIA officials said that the statements made before a judicial magistrate had tightened the case against separatists who allegedly funded stone-pelters and for spreading unrest in the Valley. It added that while one has been formally arrested, the other was detained and subsequently let off after he said he would turn approver. It also said that the former, arrested on July 24 this year after his house was raided by the NIA, approached its sleuths, giving his consent for recording his confessional statement.
He gave a detailed account of how funds were sent from Pakistan-based terror organisations as well as its external snooping agency ISI to separatists based in the Valley, the officials told the news agency. The other person who has recorded his confessional statement is a close aide of Geelani, the report said.
