New Delhi, 24th April 2023: A reverberation of justice resounded in the air as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took decisive action on Monday, the 24th of April, 2023, in the pursuit of disrupting the nefarious network of terror financing.
The properties of the sons of the designated terrorist Syed Mohammed Yusuf Shah, who is also known by the name Syed Salahudeen, the self-styled Supreme Commander of Hizb-Ul-Mujahideen (HM) and Chairman of United Jihad Council (UJC), were seized by the NIA. The impregnable estates of Shahid Yusuf and Syed Ahmed Shakeel in the verdant Kashmir region, nestled in Soibugh Tehsil, Distt. Budgam, and Nursing Garh, Mohalla Ram Bagh, respectively, have been attached under section 33(1) of UA( P) Act.
These delinquents, Shahid Yusuf and Syed Ahmed Shakeel, have been incarcerated in Delhi’s infamous Tihar Jail since October 2017 and August 2018, respectively. Both were indicted on 20th April 2018 and 20th November 2018, respectively, for receiving funds from abroad, courtesy of their father’s nefarious associates and overground workers of HM. The prodigal sons were held accountable for their complicity in aiding and abetting the heinous activities of their father, who fled to Pakistan in 1993 and was designated as an individual terrorist by India in October 2020.
Syed Salahudeen has been directing and guiding the HM cadres, as well as activists of UJC, a conglomeration of around 13 Pakistan-based Kashmir-centric terror outfits. He continues to operate from Pakistan, instigating and operationalizing militant activities primarily in the Kashmir valley. Syed Salahudeen has also 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 cadres.
The NIA has been doggedly pursuing investigations since November 2011 into the criminal conspiracy of raising, collecting, and providing funds to commit terrorist acts and distributing funds among the terror groups and their sympathizers in Jammu and Kashmir. The Special Cell of Delhi Police initiated a case in January 2011, subsequently taken over by the NIA, against eight accused, including chargesheets and supplementary chargesheets filed in 2011 and 2018.
NIA has been determined to break the backbone of the terror financing machinery operating in Jammu and Kashmir with the help of individuals based in Pakistan and other countries. On Monday, the agency also seized six shops in Awantipora in a case relating to a 2018 attack on CRPF Group Centre at Lethpora, J&K, and attached some land, including a house, belonging to the father of one of the accused in the same case in September 2020.
In 2021, NIA attached residential properties belonging to the kin of two accused in the case of the terrorist attack on CRPF Convoy at Lethpora, Pulwama, and another residential property was attached by NIA in the case relating to the killing of two brothers (Anil Parihar and Ajit Parihar).