The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has summoned two Kashmiri separatist leaders — JKlF leader Farooq Ahmad Dar, alias Bita Karate, and Javed Ahmad Baba, alias Gazi — to its New Delhi headquarters in connection with investigations related to funding from Pakistan to perpetuate subversive activities in Kashmir.
The NIA filed a case against the duo and senior Hurriyat Conference leader Nayeem Khan (now suspended from Geelani-led faction of Hurriyat) after a New Delhi-based television channel claimed that they conceded in a sting operation of being funded by Pakistan through hawala channels to carry out anti-India protests, burn schools and hospitals and create law and order situations.
Following the expose, Hurriyat suspended Khan’s National Front even as Khan described the sting operation as ‘concocted and fabricated’. Khan, Dar and Baba were questioned by the NIA officials in Srinagar for four days earlier this month.
During investigations in Kashmir, the NIA has collected details of 13 accused chargesheeted so far in the Valley in recent cases related to causing damage to schools and public property as part of a “larger conspiracy to perpetuate chaos” in Kashmir.
During their stay here, the NIA team, headed by its Additional Director General, also gathered evidence collected by the Jammu & Kashmir Police about the burning of schools. Khan had allegedly claimed in the sting operation that the educational institutions had been targeted under plans hatched in Pakistan.
The schools were damaged last year after banned Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter with security forces on July 8.
The NIA’s PE alleged that the separatists were receiving funds from the leT chief to carry out subversive activities in the Kashmir Valley, including pelting security forces with stones, damaging public property and burning schools and other government establishments.