The National Investigative Agency (NIA) in recent months has been in the news for investigating the funding that Kashmiri separatists receive to promote terror activities in the valley.
We have chronologically reported the action taken by NIA in the valley which includes:
- Raiding 23 locations related to the Pakistani funding which the Kashmiri separatists are believed to have received.
- Detaining Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son-in-law and about a month later, summoning Geelani’s sons in connection with its probe.
- Bringing in journalists and retired judges under the radar of its investigation.
- Arresting 7 Hurriyat leaders including the dreaded Bitta Karate.
- Summoning a PhD student a trade body chief.
- Arresting notorious stone pelters and also identifying 79 WhatsApp groups, 117 individuals who led stone pelting groups and gave instructions over WhatsApp. Some of the admins of these WhatsApp groups were based out of Pakistan.
- The investigative agency has also created ripples in the political circles by questioning a sitting Jammu and Kashmir MLA named Rashid Engineer, over his possible links to businessman Zahoor Watali who was arrested by the agency in August and highly incriminating material was recovered from his home.
As per reports the NIA has now even started to focus on the possible funding received by Naxals.
The report claimed that a NIA team will be dispatched to investigate a Naxal funding case dating back to August. In this case, the brother of CPI (Maoist) leader Sudhakar, named B Narayan and his business partner Satyanarayan Reddy were arrested by Ranchi police while carrying about Rs 37 lakh worth of cash and gold.
The duo were in possession of Rs 25 lakh in cash and half a kilo of gold biscuits which was allegedly meant for Maoist leader Sudhakar’s family in living in Telangana.
The agency as a result will be investigating an inter-state module involving Jharkhand and Telangana while also actively probing the Maoist trail in Telangana. Maoist leader Sudhakar is believed to collect levies from his associates in Palamau, Garhwa, Latehar, Lohardaga, Gumla and Simdega districts. He is also known to extort money from businessmen involved in mining, road construction type activities in forested areas of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Odisha.
Such a focus on the Naxal funding may not mean that the NIA has gone cold on the Kashmir terror funding front. On Tuesday the agency arrested 9 people and recovered a whopping Rs 36 crores in demonetised notes in connection with its Kashmir probe.
