The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has in a chargesheet filed last week, reproduced interviews given to a prominent Kashmiri newspaper as prime evidence against Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM) chief Asiya Andrabi and her two associates.
In the chargesheet against Ms. Andrabi and two others, Sofi Fehmeeda and Nahida Nasreen, the NIA said DeM, a separatist outfit based in Kashmir Valley was collecting gold jewellery through donations and raised funds by selling them. The accused were arrested on July 5 and are presently in Tihar jail.
The NIA said it couldn’t attach the photograph of the accused in the chargesheet as they were pardanasheen (veiled). Ms. Andrabi supported Lashkar-e-Jabbar (LeJ), a terrorist outfit that threw acid on two women in Srinagar in 2000 for not adhering to the Islamic dress code, the agency said.
It said Ms. Andrabi asked women to stay away from government jobs and investigations revealed that the DeM does not accept as members any women who work for financial institutions such as banks and who are married to soldiers or police personnel.
The chargesheet accessed by The Hindu said the DeM worked closely with multiple terrorist outfits and Kashmiri separatist leaders, particularly with Masrat Alam and Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
The NIA said Ms. Andrabi holds annual meetings on the birthday of her husband Qasim Faktoo (in jail), “wherein she gives seditious speeches and curses Indian Government for incarcerating her husband to suppress the cause of Kashmir’s Azadi.”
The interview used by the NIA as evidence was published in January in Kashmir Ink , a weekly supplement of Greater Kashmir . The NIA said the interview “disclosed her intention to use gullible youth of Kashmir as fodder for her designs of running an insurrection against the Government of India.”
“Her categorical assertion that the main motive of Dukhtaran-e-Millat is to get freedom from India first and then see to it that Islamic Caliphate is established, removes the veneer from her long-term goal of establishing sharia (Islamic law) and rule of fundamentalist Islam over the Indian subcontinent. From this statement the intent becomes illuminating,” the NIA said.
It has also included an interview given to Headlines Today (HT) and Pakistani television channels.
The NIA said the HT interview “peppered with verbal attack” on questions related to the Prime Minister was to “excite disaffection, bring into hatred and contempt” the government. “Even a cursory reading of these imputations and assertions would make evident that these are prejudicial to national integration…These are statements that create and promote enmity, hatred and ill-will between communities,” it said.
Regarding the interview to Geo TV, it said, “In this video the accused is urging the political establishment in Pakistan to help her cause (the agenda of DeM) by severing all relations with India, starting from diplomatic contact. She also urges the establishment of Pakistan to recall its (then) High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit. Her urging for support is categorical as well as general.”
The NIA said the “investigation established that there are several videos available on Internet platforms like YouTube in which the accused are celebrating the Pakistani Independence Day and Pakistan Day by raising Pakistani flag and singing the Pakistani anthem to instigate the local Kashmiri population to rise in revolt as well as a propaganda exercise to receive more funds from its supporters.”
