A letter written by 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru to hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani requesting the latter’s help to shift him from Delhi to Srinagar jail forms part of the 12,000-page charge sheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the J&K terror funding case. Guru was hanged to death in 2013 in Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
A press statement issued by Mr. Geelani and shared on WhatsApp by one of the accused also features in the voluminous charge sheet.
“That the Hurriyat leaders and the Joint Resistance Leadership are staunchly following the secessionist agenda is also evident from a Whatsapp chat retrieved from the phone of accused Ayaz Akbar Khanday,” the agency says.
NIA arrested 10 persons last year in the terror funding case. Apart from Lashkar-e-Taiba’s (LeT) Hafiz Saeed and Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, the agency has named Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Ahmad Shah alias Fantoosh, Geelani’s personal assistant Bashir Ahmad Bhat and businessman Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali in the charge sheet.
Photo journalist Kamran Yusuf, and Javed Ahmad Bhat who were identified as “stone pelters” and Hurriyat Conference leaders Aftab Ahmad Shah, Altaf Ahmad Shah, Nayeem Ahmad Khan, Farooq Ahmad Dar alias Bitta Karate, Mohammad Akbar Khanday, Raja Mehrajuddin Kalwal have also been named by the agency.
Pakistan link
The agency said Hurriyat leaders were receiving funds from Pakistan through conduits and added that funds also came from the Pakistan High Commission directly. This was substantiated by a document seized from the house of Ghulam Mohd Bhatt, an accountant of Watali who has been described as “a known Hawala conduit.”
The document showed that Watali was receiving money from Hafiz Saeed, from the ISI, from the Pakistan High Commission at New Delhi and also from a source based in Dubai. “He remitted the same to the Hurriyat leaders, separatists and stonepelters,” the charge sheet said. “The Pakistan High Commission used to organise functions and meetings in New Delhi, to which the Hurriyat leaders were invited and were given instructions and funds on a regular basis. A First Secretary level officer of the mission would act as a channel and Watali would act as a courier to deliver the funds to the Hurriyat leadership,” NIA said.
You Tube videos
The NIA chargesheet cited a YouTube clip of an alleged conversation between Hafiz Saeed and HM commander Burhan Wani where the latter requests Saeed to “increase the financial and material support to LeT in J&K” to say: “Many videos in the open source” are available that establish a close “Hurriyat-Terror” link and that they [Hurriyat] are a “gang of conspirators waging a war against the Government of India to achieve their ultimate objective i.e. secession of the State of Jammu & Kashmir.”
Another video the NIA mentioned was that of Dukhtaran-e-Millat leader Asyia Andrabi addressing a rally organised by Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan via telephone on August 14, 2015. “She seeks help from each and every Pakistani for the freedom of Kashmir. She also supports the terrorists who are being killed by security forces in Kashmir and refers to them as ‘martyrs’ (Published on YouTube on 17 Aug, 2015),” the NIA charge sheet said.
“These videos amply demonstrate that the strike calls of the Hurriyat leaders also carry the force of militant diktat as the terrorist organisations threaten people to follow the protest programmes released by the Hurriyat leaders,” the agency said.
Not spontaneous
On the protests in Kashmir Valley, the NIA said they were not spontaneous. “The protests and demonstrations in the Valley are not happening randomly or spontaneously. They are happening as per the elaborate calendar of protests authored by the Joint Resistance Leadership i.e. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik well in advance and disseminated through newspapers and other social media platforms,” NIA said. One such protest calendar was seized from the possession of accused Ahmad Shah, Geelani’s son-in-law, who was the press relations officer at Tehreek-e-Hurriyat.
“The Hurriyat leaders attend the funerals of the killed terrorists, hail them as ‘ Shaheed’ or martyrs and support their families. They also issue directives to the people to block all access to their localities to protect their youth from security forces,” NIA said. “During the course of investigation, a video was downloaded from the open source wherein Geelani hails killed militants as ‘martyrs’ and exhorts the public at large not to let the blood of martyrs go waste. In one such funeral speech after the encounter of two terrorist of LeT — Jahangir Ahmad Ganai and Mohd Shafi Gujni at Pulwama — on March 9, 2017, he paid tributes to them as ‘martyrs’ and complimented those who came from different places and gathered where ‘Mujahideen’ were trapped in ‘encounter’, sympathise with them and try to save them,” the NIA said.
The fact that the websites of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat and Hizbul Mujahideen were developed, designed, administered and hosted by the same person in Pakistan “clearly reflects the close linkages between them in cyber space and that they actively extend technical support to each other and further, that Pakistan extends all kinds of technical and logistic support to the secessionists active in J&K," the NIA said.
Victims as trophies
On the use of pellet guns, the agency says, “Hurriyat leaders and other secessionists engineer arson and other unlawful activities, which are executed by an unruly mob who destroy and damage public property. In order to control these mobs, security forces are often compelled to use force, including pellet guns.” The agency added that “some youth” who get injured by these pellet guns are portrayed and hailed by the Hurriyat as “trophies” to highlight and instigate the local populace to resort to violence against India.
No permission
From August 6 to 16, 2016, the protests led to the registration of 89 cases of stone-pelting and other unlawful activities including arson, school burning and damage to public property and vehicles etc., the agency said.
“In these cases, 366 persons were arrested, 175 persons got injured and 7 persons were killed. Complete bandh was observed during this period in Srinagar District and as per the information furnished by the Divisional Commissioner, no one applied for any permission to hold processions.”
These protests were led by important functionaries of the Hurriyat Conference including its District and Tehsil level office-bearers and other cadres.
The APHC was formed as a conglomerate of 26 political/social/religious organisations in 1993 to give a political mask to the secessionist activities, the NIA says. “This alliance has been consistently promoted and supported by Pakistan to fulfil its evil designs and to establish its claim over J&K. The APHC calls itself a political front, whereas, their agenda is to create an atmosphere conducive to the attainment of their goal of secession of J&K from Union of India,” the NIA said.
