Author: Murali Krishnan
Publication: Outlook
Date: February 24, 2003
Introduction: Intelligence pulls
up its socks but hawala-fed separatists may still find a way to beat the
law
The arrest of Anjum Zamruda Habib,
a second-rung functionary of the 23-group separatist All Parties Hurriyat
Conference (APHC), in Delhi last week with Rs 3.7 lakh, allegedly given
to her by the expelled Pakistani deputy high commissioner, Jalil Abbas
Gilani, has prompted security agencies to sharpen their operations in squeezing
financial support to Kashmiri separatists.
As a first step, security agencies,
including the IB, the Economic Intelligence Bureau (EIB), the Directorate
of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Enforcement Directorate, have decided
to coordinate their activities to dry up conduits for "terror funds".
"We are working more closely, passing
on vital information and trying to make it difficult for hawala operators
to funnel money," says a senior enforcement official.
Intelligence agencies say the APHC
is the largest recipient of foreign money among separatists and also the
nodal outfit that distributes funds to other allied organisations. Though
estimates vary, a ballpark figure on the amount that is pumped into the
organisation by Pakistan's ISI and collected through donations in Saudi
Arabia, the US and Europe, would be in the region of Rs 20 crore every
year. Most of these funds are channelled through the hawala route that
travels through West Asia, Mumbai and Delhi. "We know that Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia are the primary source of the funds," says an intelligence
official.
The modus operandi is simple. Funds
collected, say in London, is paid into a foreign account of a hawala operator
in Mumbai. He, in turn, pays to a sympathetic businessman in Delhi or Srinagar
who then passes it on to Hurriyat leaders. "It is a multi-layered operation
and sometimes 'social' organisations themselves act as fronts for terrorist
groups," says a state police official.
For instance, the J&K police
unearthed a money-laundering racket where funds were channelled through
the Kashmir Medicare Trust and the Muslim Welfare Society-both Jamaat-
e-Islami fronts. "It was a long time before we busted this racket. It functioned
surreptitiously," says a police official.
Both intelligence agencies and the
J&K police say they have enough reason to believe the Hurriyat receives
illegal foreign funding. Here are some of the measures that have been taken
to check the flow of funds:
* All nationalised banks in Delhi
have been instructed not to accept cash for making Srinagar-bound drafts
beyond Rs 20,000.
* All transactions above Rs 1 lakh
to be followed closely till they are encashed in J&K.
Despite the success in recent raids,
the cops find it difficult to frame charges against the accused as legally
admissible evidence is wanting. Early last year, a series of IB raids had
succeeded in interdicting a succession of cash deliveries for the Hizbul
Mujahideen. A dozen businessmen from Srinagar and Baramulla were arrested
for laundering these funds but many were released. "Tracking down the source
of a hawala transaction is difficult. There's no paper trail and the case
often fails in court," says an investigating officer.
"Every time we crack down on individuals
and groups who are involved in promoting terror and subversive acts, many
more surface and they find ingenious ways to funnel money," says A.K. Suri,
J&K's director-general of police. As proof, Suri told Outlook that
just last week, two teenagers were picked up from Jammu with Rs 6 lakh.
Says he: "They had hidden the money in cavities made in cricket bats, and
it was meant for distribution among militant outfits."
Last week's arrest of Habib, a functionary
of the Khawatin-e- Markaz, a wing of the APHC, and Shabir Ahmed Dar, in-charge
of the Kashmir Awareness Bureau in Delhi, has delivered a severe blow to
the Hurriyat. According to the cops, both the Hurriyat office-bearers were
reported to have taken this sum for distribution among terrorist groups,
including the Hizbul Mujahideen."They were under instructions from Hurriyat
chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat to pick up the money and our next logical step
is to question him," says Neeraj Kumar, joint commissioner of Delhi Police.
This high-profile arrest in New
Delhi has been one among the numerous detentions and seizures conducted
by the cops and intelligence agencies in the last year to choke the funding
routes to Kashmir secessionists. In March last year, another prominent
Hurriyat leader, Yasin Malik, was arrested under pota for allegedly receiving
$100,000 from a young couple arrested along the Srinagar-Jammu highway.
The duo told the police that they had brought the money from Kathmandu-based
JKLF functionaries to be handed to Malik. Intelligence officials say the
money seized from the couple was to be part of the Hurriyat's election
funds.
However, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, a
senior Hurriyat leader, dismisses these allegations outright. "At no point
are we involved in promoting and financing terrorist activities. We are
an organisation which stands for a certain ideology and we have legitimate
activities," he told Outlook. But he did mention that the APHC received
donations from the Kashmiri diaspora in the UK, US and Saudi Arabia for
their cause and operations. Says he: "We merely run offices in Jammu, Delhi
and Srinagar." Bhat also minced no words, maintaining that the Hurriyat
had never received any money from Pakistan "overtly or covertly".
Notwithstanding their strong posturing,
cops in Srinagar say they have abundant proof that at least one Hurriyat
leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani of the Jamaat-e-Islami, was a key conduit
of funds for the Hizb. "It was a result of the surveillance mounted in
June last year that we arrested him and found that he had received funds
from the London-based Ayub Thakur, who runs the World Kashmir Freedom Movement,"
says Suri.
From Geelani's palatial house on
the Srinagar Airport Road and those of his sons-in-law, the police recovered
Rs 10.25 lakh and $10,000 in cash, vouchers for jewellery and documents
relating to purchase of two houses in upmarket Srinagar. Says a police
official: "For the past two years, he had disclosed an annual income of
Rs 17,000. But he has over 15 servants and each of them is paid Rs 2,000!"
Further investigations revealed Geelani used the general store of a relative
in Lal Chowk as a front for receiving money on the Hizb's behalf.
Even in the case of two other Hurriyat
leaders-Maulvi Abbas Ansari and the slain Abdul Ghani Lone-the CBI had
registered FIRs as far back as 1997. But for some inexplicable reason,
the case was not pursued. Businesses run by Lone's relatives in West Asia
were being used as conduits for funds from abroad. Says an IB official:
"In 1996, when the Income-Tax department wrote to banks in the state seeking
details of accounts held by 16 frontline Hurriyat leaders, it stumbled
upon the account of a vegetable vendor from which transactions worth over
Rs 1 crore had taken place." The vendor, when questioned by the police,
revealed that the money was Lone's and had reached the account through
hawala channels.
Similarly, in Ansari's case, CBI
sleuths had pointed out that he received funds from the ISI and in donations
for his Shia organisation, Nuzhat-e-Inqalabi, which was routed through
two prominent Srinagar citizens.
Considering that international hawala
networks are constantly upgrading their systems of operation, it has become
that much more difficult for security agencies to get at the nexus between
the separatists and hawala operators. The drive to eliminate illegal sources
of money for Kashmir separatists may have brought some dividends. But as
Suri points out, "As long as these groups are around, they need money.
Without money, they cannot survive." And they find new ways of hoodwinking
the law.
