Srinagar: Seven separatist leaders, including hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Ahmed Shah, were today detained by National Investigation Agency in connection with funding of militant activities and last year’s unrest in the valley, sources said here this afternoon. They said the separatist leaders were earlier this month summoned by the NIA in connection with the terror funding in Jammu and Kashmir. 'They were directed to report to BSF camp at Humhama in the central Kashmir district of Budgam today,' sources said.
They said Shah was in the custody of the state police, who had put him in preventive detention immediately after the festival of Eid-ul-Fitr earlier this month. 'Spokesman of the hardline HC Aiyaz Akbar and media advisor of moderate HC Advocate Shahidul Islam, who were also summoned to Delhi for questioning after their houses were raided last month, were also detained by the agency,' they said. Others detained, included senior hardline HC leader Peer Saifullah, National Front (NF) chairman and senior separatist leader Nayeem Ahmad Khan, Farooq Ahmed Dar alias 'Bitta Karate' and Mehrajuddin Kalwal, they added.
The Agency has questioned more than a dozen separatist leaders, including belonging to both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference and businessmen in alleged terror funding from Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The NIA filed a formal FIR against terror funding after Nayeem Ahmad Khan admitted in a sting operation that separatists were receiving money from Pakistan for terror and stone pelting activities in the Valley.
The Agency later raided more than a dozen places in Srinagar, Delhi and Haryana in this connection. The NIA yesterday summoned offices bearers of three religious and social organizations, Auqaf historic Jamia Masjid, Anjuman-e-Nusrat-ul-Islam (AeNI) and Darul-Khair, headed by moderate Hurriyat Conference (HC) Mirwaiz Moulvi Omar Farooq. (UNI)