The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is all set to file a chargesheet on Thursday against second-rung separatist leaders from Jammu and Kashmir who were arrested last year for allegedly stoking violence and creating unrest in the Valley.
A senior official said not all the accused arrested by the agency would be chargesheeted and NIA will seek more time from the Special NIA court in Delhi to produce evidence against them.
A senior official said NIA was yet to find any evidence to link the demonetised currency notes worth Rs. 36 crore seized last year to the terror funding case. On November 7, NIA arrested ten people and recovered over Rs 36 crore in old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes which were declared invalid on November 8, 2016. The NIA claimed the seizures were made in connection with the ongoing probe in the J&K terror funding case.
On July 24, last year NIA arrested seven second-rung separatist leaders — Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate, Nayeem Khan, Raja Mehrajuddin Kalwal, Peer Saifullah, Aftab Hilali Shah alias Shahid-ul-Islam and Aiyaz Akbar Khaney and Altaf Ahmed Shah alias Fantoosh Geelani, the son-in-law of hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, were arrested from Srinagar and Delhi for their alleged role in “creating unrest” in the Valley.
The NIA is yet to call Geelani or any other top separatist leader for questioning.
The NIA subsequently arrested another accused- Zahoor Ahmad Watali, a prominent businessman from Kashmir in the terror funding case. A photojournalist Qamran Yousuf was also arrested in the said case.
An official claimed that the ongoing talks of Special Representative Dineshwar Sharma with various groups in J&K will have no bearing on the case.
The home ministry on Wednesday gave the sanction to prosecute the accused under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a mandatory exercise. The chargesheet under UAPA has to be filed within 180 days of the arrest of the accused, failing which they are eligible for bail. In the present case, none of the accused were granted bail since their arrest.
An NIA official said that over 80 witnesses had testified before the agency.
NIA had prepared a list of 103 persons, each involved in more than four incidents of stone pelting in the Valley in the past one year. NIA claims to have established the financial trail between the separatists and the “professional stone-throwers.”
The NIA has claimed that several letterheads of terrorist outfits like Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba were recovered from the premises of the accused. The official said that mere possession of letterheads did not amount to supporting terror activities but the handwritten correspondence seeking funds from Pakistan based outfits could be used as evidence.
