New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has attached two properties in Kashmir registered in the name of two sons of designated terrorist Syed Mohammed Yusuf Shah alias Syed Salahuddin — chief of the terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen.
“The immovable properties of Shahid Yusuf and Syed Ahmed Shakeel, located in Kashmir – in Soibugh Tehsil, Distt. Budgam and Nursing Garh, Mohalla Ram Bagh, have been attached under section 33(1) of UA(P) Act,” the agency said in a statement Monday.
Yusuf and Shakeel, accused of allegedly receiving foreign funds from Salahuddin’s associates and other overground Hizbul Mujahideen workers, are currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail. Yusuf was arrested in 2017, and Shakeel in 2018.
Salahuddin, who is believed to have fled to Pakistan in 1993, was among 18 individuals designated as terrorists by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in 2020.
According to the statement, the 77-year-old continues to operate from Pakistan. The agency also suspects that he has been regularly guiding workers of the Hizbul Mujahideen and the United Jihad Council (UJC) from his alleged base of operations in Pakistan.
The UJC, also called Muttahida Jihad Council, is a conglomerate of some 13 Pakistan-based terror outfits with a focus on Kashmir.
“Besides instigating and operationalising militant activities in India, primarily in Kashmir valley, Syed Salahuddin has been raising funds and routing finances to India through trade routes, hawala channels, and international money transfer channels for furthering the terrorist activities of HM (Hizbul) cadres,” the agency said in its statement.
The NIA had in November 2011 launched a probe into alleged criminal conspiracies aimed at the collection and distribution of funds by terror outfits and their alleged sympathisers in J&K. Though the initial investigation was carried out by the Delhi Police Special Cell after a case was registered in this regard in January 2011, the probe was later taken up by the NIA later that year.
In its statement issued Monday, the agency also said that it seized “six shops in Awantipora in a case relating to a 2018 attack on CRPF Group Centre at Lethpora, J&K”. A parcel of land, including a house, belonging to the father of one of the accused in the attack was also attached in the same case in September 2020, it added.
“In 2021, NIA had attached residential properties belonging to the kin of two accused in the case of the terrorist attack on CRPF Convoy at Lethpora, Pulwama. Another residential property has also been attached by NIA in the case relating to the killing of two brothers —Anil Parihar and Ajit Parihar,” read the statement.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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