ED raids in J-K narco-terror case; premises of ex-minister Babu Singh searched

The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday conducted simultaneous searches in Jammu and Kashmir, including at the premises of former minister Babu Singh, as part of a drugs-linked money laundering investigation, official sources said. Six premises in Srinagar and two in Jammu are being covered under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The case pertains 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 one Jatinder Singh @ Babu Singh alias Jatinder 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, 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, they said. 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 These "proceeds of crime" were withdrawn and accumulated in Dubai and further routed to Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists operating from Pakistan, the ED sources said. The Special Investigation Agency (SIA) had filed a chargesheet 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, officials said. 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, they said. 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, the officials said.