Nov 6: The Enforcement Directorate today carried out simultaneous raids at six places including four in Kashmir and two in Jammu in connection with drugs-linked money laundering investigation involving among others former Minister Jatinder Singh alias Babu Singh and a dismissed police constable Saif Din.
The raids were carried out by the ED teams under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the sources said.
Houses of Jatinder Singh alias Babu Singh, a former Minister and dismissed police constable Saif Din at Kathua and Nikki Tawi, Jammu respectively were searched by the ED teams. Saif originally hailed from Gandoh in Doda district but had constructed house at Javid Nagar, Belicharana near Niki Tawi.
Four persons whose residences were searched in Kashmir include Mohd Shareef Shah alias Shariefuddin alias Shareef Bukhari of Syedpora, Larnoo in Kokernag, Anantnag, Mubashir Mushtaq Fafoo, Farooq Ahmed Naikoo of Khwaja Sahib, Baramulla and Farooq Ahmed Jungal of Nambla, Uri, Baramulla.
The case pertained to a narcotics-linked money laundering case, first detected by the UT Police in March 2022, where a man named Mohd Shareef Shah was apprehended while attempting to deliver Rs 6.9 lakh hawala money from Kashmir to Jammu to Jatinder Singh alias Babu Singh, the sources said.
They said this money was intended to “fund” separatist and secessionist groups in Jammu to carry out subversive activities.
The agencies found an alleged nexus involving Saif Din, Farooq Ahmed Naikoo and Mubashir Mushtaq Fafoo where Pakistan based operatives were running a narco-terror module to fund subversive activities.
Naikoo orchestrated a narco-terror funding network where heroin smuggled from Pakistan was sold in India during 2021-22 and the cash from these sales (over Rs 2 crore) was deposited in local bank accounts in Srinagar during 2021-22.
These funds are alleged to have been transferred to bank accounts of Indian citizens working in Dubai who worked as ‘mules’ (illegal carriers of money) to obscure the origin of funds, they said.
These “proceeds of crime” were withdrawn and accumulated in Dubai and further routed to Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists operating from Pakistan, the sources said.
The Special Investigation Agency (SIA) had filed a charge sheet against 12 accused, including the former Minister, in the hawala money case, and further investigation is underway into a cross-border narcotics syndicate involving him in terror funding.
Singh was arrested in April 2022 after one of his workers, Mohammad Shareef Shah, a resident of south Kashmir’s Kokernag, was held with hawala money amounting to Rs 6.90 lakh in Jammu.
In 2024, SIA arrested two more persons, including a policeman, for allegedly being part of a cross-border narcotic syndicate involved in terror funding in Jammu.
The arrest of Selection grade constable Saif-ud-din of Jammu and former Sarpanch Farooq Ahmad Jungal of Uri in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district took the number of accused in the case to 17.
An SIA team had also raided the house of a policeman and a Sarpanch in the Belicharana area of Jammu on January 2 in connection with the terror financing case involving Singh and Shah, and seized some electronic gadgets.
