NIA Crackdown: Bid to crush Separatists?

News Kashmir Desk

National Investigation Agency (NIA) raids continuing since past few months have gained momentum and we are often now regularly witnessing NIA raids across the length and breadth of Kashmir .

Recently there have been swift developments with regard to it.

Few days back in press conference at historic Jamia prominent pro-freedom leaders including JKLF Chief Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani  dared the NIA. Malik sent a warning to the agency, saying “keep the doors of Tihar Jail open. We are coming.”

In the same  press conference, they said that they have already arranged for their tickets and will volunteer their arrest before NIA.

 

 

“We are going to hold a protest outside NIA headquarters in New Delhi against the harassment of pro-freedom leadership. We are ready to get arrested and be lodged in Tihar,” they said.

While talking to the news channel, Mirwaiz said that what the NIA has done is not an investigation. He added that all the information was presented to the media and instead of an investigation, it is like a media trial. He added that the entire NIA drama is a propaganda because the leadership is scared and Hurriyat’s stand will not change now.

In yet another big development , The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday raided the residence of senior separatist leader and Shia cleric, Syed Agha Hassan in Jammu and Kashmir’s Budgam district. Sources said the NIA sleuths assisted by the police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) raided Hassan’s home and carried out searches for several hours . On Wednesday, the agency had raided 24 places in the Kashmir Valley and in Delhi focusing mainly on traders, who allegedly have links with the terror funding case presently under probe by the NIA.

While few days back even a photojournalist was also arrested by NIA.NIA had stated that it arrested two notorious stone pelters .An NIA spokesperson identified them as Javed Abdul Bhat from Kulgam and Kamran Yusuf from Pulwama in south Kashmir. Describing them as “notorious stone-pelters”, the spokesperson said they would be produced in a Delhi court on Wednesday.

This is the first time the NIA has arrested people allegedly involved in stone-pelting incidents. These are also the NIA’s first arrests from south Kashmir since filing a case on May 30.

According to the NIA, Bhat is unemployed while Yusuf is a photojournalist who takes pictures of stone-pelting incidents and sells them to newspapers.  While as in reaction to this journalists from South Kashmir held a protest demonstration at Press Colony on Thursday against the arrest of Kamran Yousuf by National Investigating Agency (NIA) in stone pelting related cases

 

Meanwhile, J&K High Court Bar Association president Mian Abdul Qayoom  was also questioned for many hours at NIA Headquarters at Delhi.

Amid all this many too are seeing all this as a bid to crush separatist thought and leadership completely in troubled kashmir.