To verify facts, NIA team ‘visits’ Andrabi’s house

Ishfaq Tantry

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, July 30

A National Investigation Agency (NIA) team on Monday “visited” the residence of woman separatist leader and Dukhtaran-e-Millat chief Asiya Andrabi in Srinagar to “verify certain facts’ which “cropped up during the investigation” of the case registered against her.

Andrabi and two of her woman associates were taken by the NIA into custody on July 6 and lodged at Tihar Jail in a sedition case.

The NIA team accompanied by the local police inspected Andrabi’s residence located in Soura on the outskirts of the city, sources said. The NIA, however, clarified that it was not a raid carried out at Andrabi’s residence.

“During the investigation, certain facts had come to the fore. Just to verify those facts, an NIA team was in Srinagar, and that was misunderstood as a raid,” an NIA spokesman told The Tribune. He further said that during the investigation, the hoisting of Pakistan flag cropped up and to verify some facts, the team had visited Andrabi’s residence in Srinagar.

On June 29, the NIA had revealed that an FIR had been registered against Andrabi and her two associates, Sofi Fehmeeda and Nahida Nasreen, for allegedly advocating secession of Jammu and Kashmir from the Union of India and calling for jihad and use of violence against the country. The Dukhtaran-e-Millat has already been proscribed under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.