Journalists, columnists, Govt servants barred to accept foreign hospitality, funding
Excelsior Special Correspondent
JAMMU, Apr 22: A Police inquiry panel, set up to arrest the rot of the inflow of foreign funds in the wake of Sayyid Ghulam Nabi’s conviction by an American court, has started its business with a low key profile.
Government has appointed two Police officers-SP Budgam Uttam Chand and SP Counter-Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) Sheikh Junaid Mehmood—for holding a preliminary inquiry into reports that quite a number of Indians, including many from Jammu & Kashmir, had enjoyed hospitality in certain foreign countries and received monetary support from Dr Fai for promoting ISI’s and Government of Pakistan’s multi-faceted disinformation campaign on the Kashmir problem.
Successive governments have conveniently ignored these reports and chosen to be permissive to the foreign visits of these ‘intellectuals’ in the name of ‘democracy’. Action, not even of eyewash, was never initiated till the prosecution in Virginia established serious charges against Fai and an American court not only declared him as an “ISI agent” but also revealed that ‘intellectuals’ like Gautam Navlakha had been put on ISI’s payroll on the recommendations and intervention of Fai.
The American court also dismissed letters of 53 Indians, including Kashmir’s separatist leaders and their intellectual cheerleaders as part and parcel of a Pakistani gameplan. Mercifully, all of these foot soldiers of the Pakistani intelligence agency are still intact in Manmohan Singh’s India and the Omar Abdullah government in Jammu & Kashmir has not ordered even a disciplinary actions against the public servants who have risen to fame and built fortunes against the given task of promoting Fai’s and ISI’s agenda in Jammu & Kashmir.
These people have been overtly teaching separatism and generating hatred for India and its systems through their lectures in University classrooms and prolific columns in newspapers. It is because of this “inaction” that pessimists are dismissing the Police inquiry just an eyewash to offset the embarrassment India has suffered on account of shutting her eyes to the mushroom growth of Dr Fais in the state-controlled organs and institutions.
J&K Government has even ignored suggestions of appointing a senior officer of the rank of IGP or Additional DGP as head of the inquiry. Authoritative sources, nevertheless, insist that the inquiry had begun in a no-nonsense manner and the team functioning under two SPs was collecting necessary evidences and documents related to Fai’s J&K connections and activities. These sources insist that IGP Kashmir, S M Sahai, himself chaired a meeting with the team of investigators and issued necessary actions, making it clear that the action would be completed in a timeframe and taken to its logical conclusion.
“It is, admittedly, a problem that certain individuals have grown larger than life and they are labouring under the belief that nobody would dare to touch them, let alone calling them for clarifications and questioning”, said a senior Police official. He, however, asserted that no delaying or leniency was possible in the Fai inquiry as, according to him, Government of India was firmly monitoring the process.
Sources maintained that the inquiry team had begun to study entire gamut of the inflow of foreign funding, through hawala and non-hawala channels, into the conflict riddled State of Jammu and Kashmir. The team had noticed that most of Fai’s Indian and Kashmiri retailers had carried out anti-Indian activities and worked for Fai despite being totally barred from accepting any foreign hospitality or funding by provisions and rules of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act of 2010 and Foreign Exchange (Regulation) Act.
The Act, enforced in the entire country including Jammu and Kashmir, and covers all Indians in any foreign country, makes it clear that certain persons and organisations were totally barred from accepting any kind of foreign contribution or hospitality. They include candidates contesting any election, correspondents, columnists, cartoonists, editors, owners, printers or publishers of a registered newspaper, associations or companies engaged in the production or broadcast of audio news or audio-visual news or current affairs programmes through any electronic mode or form or any other mode of mass communication or company engaged in such type of a business.
Those barred by the law also include judges, government servants, or employees of any entity controlled or owned by the government, members of any legislature including MPs, MLAs and MLCs, political parties or their office-bearers and organisations of a political nature.
Members of the inquiry, according to sources, have developed information that quite a number of the state’s mediapersons, academics, columnists had generously received ISI’s financial support through Fai and other channels in the last 22 years of insurgency. Questions with regard to these mediapersons building empires and becoming multi-millionaires, inspite of their newspapers running on huge losses and circulation being just a few thousand copies, have remained unanswered in J&K. As of now, all these people are unfazed and continuing their activities with the belief that India’s criminals could be unsafe anywhere but not in India.
Reached for his comments, head of the ‘preliminary inquiry’ and SP Budgam, Uttam Chand, said that necessary material was being collected and studied. He made it clear that anybody, howsoever mighty, would be called for questioning as and when his or her involvement in Fai related activities is established prima facie. He said that the PI would be converted into FIR in accordance with the violations of law noticed and all the guilty would be brought to justice.
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