Terror funding probe: NIA summons Geelani’s son again

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), probing terror funding to Kashmiri separatists and militants, has issued a second notice to Naeem Geelani elder son of Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Geelani asking him to attend the agency’s Delhi headquarters for questioning.

This is the second time in a week that junior Geelani has been summoned by the NIA to Delhi. Earlier, he had been asked to appear before the probe agency on 9 in Delhi. He has been summoned again on April 22 in case no. NIA crime no. RC- 10/2017/NIA/DLI.

Naeem, a doctor by profession, is presently posted at JLNM hospital Srinagar and is under the NIA scanner for alleged terror funding. He along with his wife and two children came back from Pakistan in November 2010 after living in the neighbouring country for nearly 10 years. He had reportedly suffered a massive heart attack in 2009 and was operated upon in Islamabad.

Geelani’s younger son Naseem, who works at an agricultural university in Srinagar, has also been questioned by the NIA several times in the terror funding case. Both the brothers are on the NIA radar in connection with the premier probe agency's 30 May 2017 case registered against Kashmiri separatists for allegedly conniving with Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Dukhtaran-e-Millat, and others to raise and receive funds to create unrest in the valley.

The anti-terror probe agency is investigating a case related to terror funding in Kashmir through hawala channels. The agency carried out a series of raids on separatists in February. The agency claimed to have recovered several incriminating documents, including letterheads of different terrorist organisations as well as high-end communication systems, during the raids.

The NIA has arrested nearly a dozen people, including seven separatist leaders, a high-profile businessman and a son of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir based Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Syed Salah-Ud-Din.

The separatists while responding to NIA raids, allege New Delhi is frustrated to the extent that they frame and arrest the “pro-freedom leaders and activists on the pre-planned psychological crackdown so that they surrender and stop voicing the sentiments of their nation.”

They claimed that the raids being conducted by NIA and the hype and sensationalism around it just goes on to show the “desperate attempt by the government of India to vilify and discredit the leadership and in turn discredit the people's freedom movement.”