The National Investigation Agency has arrested seven Kashmiri separatists, including hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Shah, in a terror funding case.
The NIA is investigating if funds from Pakistan were used to fuel last year’s unrest in Kashmir Valley that left 100 people, most of them civilians, dead.
The others who have been arrested are Tehreek-e-Hurriyat’s Ayaz Akbar and Mehrajuddin Kalwal, Shahid-ul-Islam, who is from the Mirwaiz faction of the Hurriyat, Naeem Khan of the Jammu Kashmir National Front and separatist leaders Peer Saifullah and Bitta Karatay, who was arrested from Delhi. The other six were arrested from Srinagar.
In the last few weeks, the NIA raided places across Kashmir, Delhi and Haryana, looking for evidence of separatist leaders and businessmen receiving funds from Hafiz Saeed, who heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa group, and other Pakistan-based militant outfits.
Kashmir was rocked by violent protests after Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani was killed in a gunfight with security forces on July 8, 2016.
