TRF funding Kashmiri youth, fuelling anti-India agenda: NIA

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has found that The Resistance Front (TRF) — a proxy of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) — has been financing local youth in Kashmir and “inciting them” to carry out anti-India activities.

“An ongoing investigation revealed that local youth were being instigated to indulge in anti-national activities and funded by the terror outfits,” an NIA officer said, adding that the probe had also uncovered a foreign trail of funds being channelled into the Valley.

The TRF, recently designated a global terrorist organisation by the US, was behind the Pahalgam terror attack that left 26 civilians dead. Intelligence inputs suggest the group was floated to mask the LeT’s direct involvement in attacks across the Valley.

After the Pahalgam attack, the case was handed over to the NIA, which in the past two months has gathered evidence linking the attackers directly to Pakistan.

On Wednesday, the agency searched two locations in Srinagar and Handwara connected to two men earlier arrested by the J&K Police, seizing crucial documents related to the case.

Overground workers have been under the NIA’s scanner for their involvement in supporting terrorist activities such as facilitating militants, and collecting and distributing sticky bombs or magnetic bombs, IEDs, funds, narcotic substances and arms or ammunition.

According to official sources, terror outfits, like the TRF, supported by their leaders in Pakistan, have been conspiring to commit acts of terror and violence by radicalising local youth and mobilising overground workers to disturb peace and communal harmony in J&K.