National Investigating Agency (NIA) has made startling revelations about huge properties and assets raised by seven separatist leaders who were arrested by it in Srinagar on July 24 and brought to New Delhi. The court remanded them to police custody for ten days in the first instance.
NIA has released only trickles of information regarding the assets raised by these separatist leaders which runs into hundreds of crores of rupees. At least 80 such properties have been identified comprising palatial bungalows, multiple houses, malls, orchards, huge tracts of land, rows of shops, mines, lands at prime locations and flats in Delhi and Jammu. These properties have mostly been raised during last two decades and half of insurgency in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The important question in this regard is what the financial position of these separatists was twenty- eight years ago, and what is their status today? Obviously, the Enforcement Department will raise the question whether the properties raised are commensurate with the genuine income of the owners of these properties. None among the separatists, now under investigation, has been holding any such sources of income as would enable them to raise these huge properties of enormous value. It is clear that money has been coming to them through hawala and other sources all clandestinely from foreign sources particularly Pakistan. Enormous funds are raised by Kashmiri Diaspora in Saudi Arabia, Gulf countries and in western countries and they send huge money to these leaders for running militancy in Kashmir. We know that hawala a widespread network of Kashmiri separatists has been very effective in transferring money to separatist leaders for fomenting insurgency in Kashmir. It now appears that a good part of this money has been eaten up by these leaders and only a fraction has been passed on to the insurgents. For a long time sections of media and many Kashmir watchers had been repeatedly saying that insurgency in Kashmir perpetuates only through money power. Police and ED functionaries have seized big monies from couriers intending to pass it on to insurgency conduits and separatist leaders in Kashmir. However, so far the Government did not act strongly to unearth the network and bring the culprits to book.
A chilling revelation made by the ED is that it has found clues to suggest that some of the security guards deployed for the protection of the separatists have been instrumental in helping the separatists in locating prime lands and settling the transactions in favour of the separatist leaders. The security personnel receiving salary from the Government and helping the separatists to invest their ill-gotten money into purchasing properties will have to be dealt with in accordance with the law of the land. It also raises the question as to what is the need of providing security cover to these separatists when they are hand in glove with the insurgents.
But the most important lesson for the people and especially the youth of Kashmir from these separatist leaders raising riches worth crores of rupees in the name of fighting freedom struggle in Kashmir is to ask themselves who are they accepting as leaders of the so-called freedom struggle.. The question to the youth of Kashmir is that while they have been responding to the strike calls and stone throwing instructions of separatist leaders and getting injured and disabled in the course of clashes, the leaders have been busy in raising properties in crores. Should they continue to repose trust in this leadership? It is the people of Kashmir who will have to make objective judgment of the separatist leaders whom they have raised to the status of icons and are following them blindly. They must ask themselves whose interests these separatist leaders have been serving all these years and at whose cost? Obviously they have been serving the interests of Pakistan at the cost of ordinary Kashmiris.
The ED rules say that if these persons are not able to prove that these huge properties have been raised through genuine sources then the properties will be attached by the Government and put on auction. Secondly, the law should come into motion that these separatist leaders have contrived through clandestine and criminal means to bring innumerable woes and suffering to the people of Kashmir and the law must come into force against them. We believe that ED has only touched on the tip of the iceberg and there is much more that lies beneath what has been so far unearthed. Kashmir watchers believe that leave aside the separatist leaders, there are other elements who are also reported to have maintained close links with anti-national forces and have more often than not facilitated illegal bank transactions. It is the clandestine flow of illegal money that has kept insurgency going on in Kashmir. The ED has taken a bold step in exposing what are the true intensions of the separatists. Now that they are exposed fully the law should take its natural course.
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