The Central intelligence agencies are mulling registering cases and throwing in prison Hurriyat and other Kashmiri separatist leaders for their alleged links with Pakistan-based terrorist groups. Informed sources tell this newspaper that the process has already started, with the chief of Dukhtar-e-Millat, Asiya Andrabi and some of her colleagues slapped with the Public Safety Act (PSA) and dispatched to Jammu jail.
There are likely to be more arrests as intelligence agencies probe into the funding of the separatists and the utilisation of that fund to stir the current unrest in the Kashmir valley.
On Saturday, hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani suspended separatist Nayeem Khan’s National Front from the Hurriyat after a news channel caught him on tape admitting to receiving funds from Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Saeed to create unrest in the valley. The latest sting has hardened positions in the Bharatiya Janata Party that stern action must be taken against the separatists.
Although J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti of the People’s Democratic Party is openly advocating talks with Hurriyat leaders and with Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute, sources say that she is under severe pressure from the Central agencies to arrest the Hurriyat leaders.
On Friday, a National Investigating Agency team started the initial investigation into the funding of the Geelani-led Hurriyat Conference. The NIA team will be in Srinagar for some more time as it tries to locate the hawala routes used to bring finances to Kashmir to instigate stone-pelting and violence. The NIA is likely to question National Front chairman Naeem Khan, JKLF leader Farooq Ahmed Dar, aka Bitta Karate, and Tehreek-e-Hurriyat leader Gazi Javed Baba.
Voices against the BJP on this have started coming from ruling alliance partner PDP. Senior PDP leader Nizam-ud-Din Bhat said, “We consider all Hurriyat leaders as stakeholders for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. We have mentioned this in the agenda of alliance and BJP as a partner must respect the document signed by both of us.” He said that the BJP should not try to undermine the efforts of the PDP government to reach out to all sections of society including the separatists to hammer out a mutually acceptable formula so that violence ends.
Another PDP leader and minister in the Mehbooba Mufti Cabinet, told this reporter that Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh of the BJP should not have publicly stated that he wanted to see all Hurriyat leaders behind bars and the Hurriyat Conference banned. He said that this was against the spirit of the PDP-BJP coalition and that the PDP believed that the Hurriyat was an important stakeholder in the dialogue process with New Delhi. When asked if BJP was putting pressure on the PDP by raising the issue of rotating the Chief Ministership of J&K between PDP and BJP, he said, “We said no to this when we entered into an alliance with the BJP. It was decided that the Chief Minister would be from the PDP and that too for a full term of six years.”
Meanwhile, the J&K police informed moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Thursday that he was under threat and his and his colleagues’ security was being reviewed. Informed sources told this newspaper that the state government has decided to review the security of all the moderate leaders in the light of the recent threat issued against them by Hizbul commander Zakir Bhat.
“Mirwaiz has been told not to attend any public meetings or allow anyone unknown inside his residence,” a close aide of the Mirwaiz told this reporter.
Officials refused to comment on whether they have received any inputs about any possible attacks on the moderate Hurriyat leaders, but sources said that the government has taken a decision at the highest level to review the security of the Hurriyat leaders. In the last couple of weeks, the Mirwaiz has not been allowed by the police to step outside his home. They did not allow him to attend a seminar in the office of the Hurriyat. And on Friday, he was told that he would not be allowed to go to the main Srinagar Jamia mosque to deliver his sermon.
It is in place to mention that Hizbul commander Zakir Bhat, in a series of audio tapes, has declared that he would not hesitate to kill those separatist leaders who are advocating Kashmir as a political, and not Islamist, struggle. In an oblique reference to the Mirwaiz, Zakir Bhat said that these leaders should explain to the people of Kashmir why they are using the pulpits of mosques to preach to them.