Continuing its crackdown, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday conducted raids on banned Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) at several locations across Kashmir in connection with a terror funding probe.
Reports said the premier probe agency sleuths accompanied by police and CRPF personnel, raided houses of senior members of the banned organisation.
A spokesperson of the NIA said, “The members of the organisation have been collecting funds domestically and abroad through donations particularly in the form of Zakat (charity), Mowda and Bait-ul-Mal purportedly to further charity and other welfare activities. But these funds are instead being used for violent and secessionist activities.”
“The funds raised by the JeI are also being channelised to terror organisations such as Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and others through well organised networks of JeI cadres. The JeI has also been motivating impressionable youth of Kashmir and recruiting new members (rukuns) in J&K to participate in disruptive secessionist activities,” he claimed.
Sources said the raids were conducted in south Kashmir’s Shopian and Pulwama district and north Kashmir’s Baramulla at the residences of the JeI activists and some bank employees.
They said the case was registered by the NIA in pursuance to an order from Union Ministry of Home Affairs relating to “separatist and secessionist activities of the JeI, an unlawful association under the UA (P) Act, even after its proscription on 28.02.2019.”
In 2019, the Centre had banned the JeI for five years after the Pulwama terror attack, in which 40 paramilitary CRPF personnel were killed and which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
Over 100 JeI members, including its chief Abdul Hameed Fayaz were arrested by the police at that time.
A senior police officer said that right from 1990, the JeI functioned as a socio-political wing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant outfit. “Its (JeI) cadres function as over ground workers of the Hizbul in providing infrastructure/logistic support and organising protective shells in which militants operate,” he said.
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