After evading two summons, moderate separatist leader and Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq finally appeared before the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday in connection with the probe in a terror funding case.
The Mirwaiz, who was provided security upon his arrival at the Indira Gandhi Airport, was accompanied by other separatist leaders, including Abdul Gani Bhat, Bilal Lone and Maulana Abbas Ansari.
The Mirwaiz was asked to appear before the NIA on March 11 and March 18 but he expressed his inability to join the probe in the national Capital citing security concerns. In its third summons, issued last week, the NIA assured him security during his visit here for questioning in the case.
The NIA case relates to terror funding from Pakistan for terrorist activities, stone pelting on security forces, burning down of schools and damaging public property. The agency is seeking to identify the chain of players behind the terror financing by Pakistan for fuelling jehadi activities in the Valley.
The NIA has named Pakistan-based terror group Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), Hafiz Saeed as an accused in the case. JuD is the front for the banned Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. The case has also named outfits like the Hurriyat Conference factions led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and the Mirwaiz, another Pakistan-based terror group Hizbul Mujahideen and the Dukhtaran-e-Millat.
Ahead of Mirwaiz’s appearance before the NIA, the Hurriyat Conference held an executive meeting on Sunday night and had the audacity to condemn the move to summon him to the national capital. The Hurriyat claimed its chairman was “being deliberately harassed and there was an effort to criminalise leadership for their political stand”.
The NIA had on February 26 carried out searches at the premises of several leaders of the outfits named in the FIR, including the Mirwaiz.
The probe agency questioned two maternal uncles of the Mirwaiz, Maulvi Manzoor and Maulvi Shafat, and his close aides last year. Both Manzoor and Shafat are retired senior Government officers.
According to inputs with the security agencies, the outfits and the leaders named in the FIR in league with the Pakistan Army-ISI combine and its terror affiliates like LeT and JeM and are suspected to actively involved in radicalizing the youth in the Valley for furthering the nefarious agenda of Pakistan in the State. At the same time the children of these dubious leaders have obtained education in prestigious convent schools in the Valley and some of them have pursued higher education in Western countries, sources said.