Terror funding case: Separatist Shabir Shah’s aide Aslam Wani arrested by ED

Aslam Wani, a close aide of separatist leader Shabir Shah was arrested from Srinagar on Sunday by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the terror funding case. He will be brought back to Delhi, according to ANI.

A senior official in the central probe agency said Wani was arrested from Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar by the ED with the help of the state police. The official said Wani (36) is being flown in from Srinagar and will be produced by evening before a special judge in Delhi for his further custody.

The ED had recently got a non-bailable warrant (NBW) issued against him from a Delhi court. The agency had issued multiple summonses for his appearance in the case but he never appeared. “The warrant has been executed and Wani will now be confronted with Shah and others in order to take the probe forward”, he said.

Earlier, the NIA custody of four Kashmiri separatists, including the son-in-law of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, was on Friday extended by 10 more days by a Delhi court in the terror funding case.

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Special Judge O P Saini, however, sent three other separatist leaders to judicial custody for a month after the National Investigation Agency did not seek their custody.

Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Ahmed Shah and other six accused Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Shahid-ul-Islam, Mehrajuddin Kalwal, Nayeem Khan and Farooq Ahmed Dar were arrested on July 24 in the case of alleged funding of terror and subversive activities in the Kashmir Valley.

The agency had earlier sought their custody, saying they had to be taken to various places for the purpose of investigation.

Shah, the son-in-law of hardline separatist leader Geelani, was in the custody of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, who had put him under preventive detention immediately after the festival of Eid last month.

Geelani’s close aides Tehreek-e-Hurriyat spokesman Ayaz Akbar and Peer Saifullah were arrested by the NIA from the Valley. Shahid-ul-Islam is the spokesman of the moderate Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umer Farooq.

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