NIA Raids and Kashmir

Malik Sajid

Kashmir is becoming now land of NIA Raids as every day we here news of NIA Raids and since sometime we have seen scores of these raids being conducted in Kashmir.




Today also we woke to the news of NIA raids . NIA conducted fresh searches at 12 locations in Jammu and Kashmir as part of its probe into whether the funding of separatists from Pakistani  militant  outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was being used to fuel violence in the valley.

The searches, which the central agency termed as follow-up action, were carried out in Srinagar, Baramulla, and Handwara.

Those raided on Wednesday included a Srinagar-based advocate Mohammed Shafi Reshi and three relatives of prominent businessman Zahoor Watali, whose premises were searched in the first round of raids.

“We suspect financial links between the separatists and those raided on Wednesday,” said Alok Mittal, inspector general of NIA.

The agency has so far arrested seven people – Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Ahmed Shah, Ayaz Akbar Khanday, Mehrajuddin Kalwal, Peer Saifullah (all from Geelani’s faction of Hurriyat), Shahid-ul-Islam (of the faction led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq), Nayeem Khan of the Jammu Kashmir National Front and Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karatay of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (R).

The agency now plans to summon Geelani, Yasin Malik, Shabir Shah, and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq.




A political Analyst stated – “ Whatever the outcome of these NIA raids leads to and whatever the court verdict comes in this regard will go a long a way in impacting the politics of Kashmir and overall contours of agitations that take place here.”

Undoubtedly, NIA Raids are having a far reaching impact on Kashmir polity.