Pakistan offers scholarship to influence Kashmir students: NIA
NEW DELHI : Pakistan is offering scholarships to Kashmiri students to prepare a generation which will be inclined towards it and most of the youth on student visa in the neighboring country were relatives of militants, the National Investigation Agency( NIA) said in its charge sheet in the terror funding case.
NIA claimed that the visa applications of Kashmiri students were recommended by them to the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi. The NIA named various Hurriyat leaders, including hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, in this connection.
The NIA chargesheet filed in a court on January 18 revealed that militants who fled to Pakistan had pursued their admission matters with the help of Hurriyat leaders based in Pakistan and Pakistan administered Kashmir.Scholarships are offered for MBBS and engineering seats under various schemes of the Pakistan government.
“During the investigation, it was ascertained that students who were proceeding to Pakistan on student visas were either relatives of ex-militants or relatives of families of active militants who had indulged in various anti-national activities and had migrated to Pakistan or they were known to Hurriyat leaders,” it said.
The chargesheet filed in a court here on January 18 revealed that militants who fled to Pakistan had pursued their admission matters with the help of Hurriyat leaders based in Pakistan and Pakistan administered Kashmir. According to Agency the scholarships are offered for MBBS and engineering seats under various schemes of the Pakistan government.
NIA seized a document from the house of Nayeem Khan wherein he recommends a student for admission in a “standard medical college” in Pakistan because “her family has remained committed to the freedom struggle through thick and thin”.
Similarly, a document seized from the house of Shahid-Ul-Islam clearly shows that the Hurriyat leaders were sending recommendation to the Pakistan High Commission for the issuance of visa, it said.
The Hurriyat leaders are Aftab Hilali alias Shahid-ul-Islam, Ayaz Akbar Khandey, Farooq Ahmad Dar alias Bitta Karate, Nayeem Khan, Altaf Ahmad Shah, Raja Mehrajuddin Kalwal and Bashir Ahmad Bhat alias Peer Saifullah.
Shah is the son-in-law of Geelani who is a strong votary of Jammu and Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan. Hilali is a close aide of moderate Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.
The NIA also chargesheeted businessman Zahoor Ahmad Watali and two alleged stone pelters — Kamran and Javed Ahmed Bhat.
Watali has been associated with the LoC trade and has worked as the president of the LoC Traders’ Association in the past.(With IANS inputs ).
