The Kashmir terror funding probe of the National Investigation Agency is only getting murkier with the first chargesheet in the case naming top Kashmiri businessman Zahoor Watali, who has allegedly confessed to have acted as a conduit between top political leadership in Pakistan, the Indian government and top intelligence agencies of both countries. His name is among the dozen accused in the chargesheet filed by the agency in a special court on Thursday for orchestrating terror acts in the Valley at the behest of Pakistani handlers.
The NIA now wants to dig deeper into Watali’s role as he has already spilled beans on how Hurriyat received funds from both India and Pakistan during the previous Congress regime.
He has claimed before the NIA sleuths that he has been the coordinator of peace talks for which the then Pakistan Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf had asked him to mediate between Hurriyat, Pakistan and India, said investigators.
The NIA has recorded Watali’s statement where he has also claimed that he was the one who carried the message of the newly elected BJP government to the then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asking him to be present during the oath taking ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The confessions made before a police official are not admissible in court, so the NIA will need to find evidence to establish the alleged claims in his confessional statement.
But if there is any truth in these statements, the NIA will be opening a Pandora's box as more and more names will tumble out. Watali has claimed that the Jammu and Kashmir political leadership and the central government had been using him to bring the Hurriyat on board, to mend relations with Pakistan and even met ISI officials some of whom he was still in touch with.
Watali’s political connections go back to his business dealings in the early 1990s when he first went to Dubai as a steel scrap broker. “He used to negotiate in steel scrap supply (Pakistan Steel - Pakistan government and also with a concern of Nawaz Sharif ) and used to work as a broker for supply of sugar from Pakistan to Gulf,” said an NIA official.
Soon Watali became a big name in business and a senior minister in the then J&K government verbally asked to get cross LoC trade business streamlined. It was in 2013, Watali claims, that he observed that there is a huge scandal in cross LoC trade and that he informed the local government time to time. Watali is believed to have corroborated the claims of the NIA that terror funding was taking place in the garb of cross border trade. Many Kashmiri people trade Kashmiri art like Kashmiri Shawls and antiques in Dubai and other Gulf countries. He is learnt to have told the NIA sleuths that these people used to send their goods over invoicing through Airways and get money through banks. After a few days they used to go to Dubai and other Gulf countries and bring the same articles in low cost. Through this way, money was coming into the country.
The NIA has asked for a list of exporters from customs department in Srinagar to know the volume of trade. As per the alleged version of Watali to NIA, there is a possibility that the amount earned through this trade was being utilised for terror funding.
In its chargesheet, the NIA has said that Watali and eleven other accused persons—the Hurriyat leaders, the terrorists and stone-pelters—are carrying out terrorist attacks and orchestrating violence as a part of their well- planned criminal conspiracy hatched with the active support, connivance and funding from terrorist organisations based in Pakistan. It has said that the objective of Pakistan and its agencies is secession of the State of Jammu & Kashmir by waging war against the Government of India.
“The investigation also brought out that the secessionist and separatist leaders belonging to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference have established a network of cadres throughout Kashmir Valley who incite the youth to attack all symbols of Indian sovereignty, especially Indian security forces who are deployed there for the maintenance of law and order,” it says.
This is happening under the overall guidance and instructions from Lashkar patron Hafiz Syed, Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin and their Pakistani handlers, said the NIA.
