Shabir Shah was in touch with Hafiz Saeed: ED

New Delhi, September 23

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) today claimed that arrested Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah was in touch with Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

In its charge sheet, the financial probe agency claimed that “Shah admits that he talks to Hafiz Saeed, a global terrorist based in Pakistan on phone on the issue of Kashmir”.

“Recently, he had talked with Hafiz Saeed in January 2017,” the agency said. The revelations were made in the charge sheet that the agency filed against alleged hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani and Shah in connection with an ongoing money laundering case.

The charge sheet also revealed that Mohammad Shafi Shayar, a Kashmiri, was also a part of their movement before he went to Pakistan. “Shah was in touch with Shayar through phone. On the analysis of the call detail report, it was found that 20 calls were made by Shayar from his Pakistan number from January 22, 2017 to July 26, 2017, on the mobile of Shabir Shah,” the charge sheet alleged.

According to the ED, Shah had met Shayar at the Central jail, Jammu, in 1993-94. After being released from jail, Shayar left for Pakistan with his family and settled in Rawalpindi. He belonged to an organisation named People’s League in Anantnag. The charge sheet further alleged that “Shah claimed that these calls were made from Pakistan to discuss the Kashmir issue”.

“Shah admitted that Shayar used to talk to him and not to his family for the past 18 to 20 years. Shayar also called Shah through Zamir Ahmed Sheikh, the photographer, driver and close aide of Shah,” the ED claimed. The ED also said that Shah’s Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party website’s IP address belonged to Peshawar in Pakistan.

Shah was arrested by the ED on July 25 in a money laundering case of 2005. The ED arrested Aslam Wani on August 6. Wani had allegedly confessed that he had passed on Rs 2.25 crore in hawala money to Shah. — IANS