Seven second-rung separatists were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for their alleged role in “creating unrest” in the Kashmir valley. A senior NIA official told that it was not investigating the case as that of “terror funding” alone, but to get to the root of the larger conspiracy to “keep the Valley burning over the last decade.” The NIA informed Home Minister Rajnath Singh about 10 days ago that they had collected enough evidence to make the first round of arrests in the case. The Hurriyat has called a shutdown on Tuesday against the arrests. None of the top leadership of the Hurriyat conference including Syed Ali Shah Geelani had been summoned by the NIA since it registered a case on May 30 under various sections of the anti-terror Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). It was big catch for NIA in recent times.
Calicut Krishnan Ramani
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
