NEW DELHI, Aug 23:
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has issued fresh summons to Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah, at present in Delhi, for questioning in connection with a decade-old case of terror financing through ‘hawala channel’.
The summons have been sent at the south Delhi guest house where Shah, the Chairman of Democratic Freedom Party of Jammu and Kashmir, has been kept after Delhi Police detained him yesterday when he landed here to meet Pakistani leadership in prelude to the now cancelled NSA-level talks, sources said.
Shah has been summoned at the Delhi zonal office of the agency here this week, sources said.
This is the third attempt by the agency to serve summons on Shah in a August 2005 case where Delhi Police’s Special Cell arrested Mohammed Aslam Wani, an alleged hawala dealer, who had claimed that he had passed on Rs 2.25 crore to Shah.
While the agency had said its earlier summons were not replied by Shah, the Kashmiri leader had in the past said that the case was “politically motivated”.
Wani, who is at present out on a bail, has also been summoned by the ED, which registered a case under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against him and Shah.
Wani was arrested allegedly with Rs 63 lakh received through ‘hawala’ channels from the Middle East and a large amount of ammunition on August 26, 2005.
During questioning, he had claimed before police that Rs 50 lakh was to be delivered to Shah and Rs 10 lakh to the Jaish-e-Mohammad ‘area commander’ in Srinagar Abu Baqar while the rest of the money was to be his commission.
Wani (35), who hailed from Srinagar, also claimed that he had delivered about Rs 2.25 crore to Shah and his kin in several instalments over the past year.
Wani, who ran a computer shop with his brother-in-law Feroz Mattoo, had come in contact with Shah early in 2004 when he had sold him a computer, police had said.
According to sources, Shah had allegedly asked Wani to channel ‘hawala’ money to him from Delhi for which he was paid three per cent as commission.
He had also allegedly given Wani the phone number of one Saifi based in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) who gave him instructions to collect the money.
Wani had come in contact in March, 2005, with Abu Baqar who had directed him to collect a consignment of explosives, arms and ammunition from Delhi, the sources said.
Wani was arrested along with 5 kg RDX, 10 detonators and a foreign-made pistol with 15 live cartridges from an East of Kailash apartment in south Delhi.
In response to the summons issued to him, Shah said he would present himself before the ED in October, agency sources said. (PTI)
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