NIA arrested fifth alleged hawala operator with Lashkar links
In a case of fund raising for terror related activities, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested an alleged hawala operator from Haridwar in Uttarakhand. Abdul Samad, the fifth man arrested in the case has links with Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba, an official spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Samad, the fifth person arrested in the case, was brought to Delhi from Haridwar; he has been produced in court and sent to six-day NIA custody.
NIA officers allege that Samad was a leading hawala operator who had his networks in Muzaffarnagar, Deoband and Roorkee and was acting as the conduit of a Lashker financier based in Saudi Arabia.
In November 2017, Abdul Samad allegedly collected Rs 3.5 lakh from hawala operators in Muzaffarnagar, to deliver it to Shaikh Abdul Naeem, an active LeT terrorist, officers say. Shaikh had apparently established bases in Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, on the orders of his handlers in Pakistan, the NIA said.
Besides Samad, the NIA has also arrested four other suspected terrorists - Shaikh Naeem, Dhannu Raja, Mahfooz Alam based Bihar and Touseef Ahmed Malik. The case started with Shaikh's arrest. A resident of Aurangabad in Maharashtra, he was caught in Lucknow in November last year. Investigations revealed that he had spent time in south Kashmir and photographed some Army installations, NIA officials said.
Shaikh has disclosed, during questioning, that he had stayed in Pulwama, scouted various places took photographs for terror related operations. Wanted in connection with a 2014 terror case and on the run since then, Shaikh told investigators that some key installations and railway tracks in the Valley were on the terror radar. He also visited places in Himachal Pradesh, particularly Kasol, which is popular with tourists and Israeli nationals, according to the officials.
With IANS inputs