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DOST KHAN
JAMMU: There is something terribly wrong with Syed Ali Shah Geelani. After shunning his initial inhibition over acceptance of relief by the Valley based flood sufferers as a mark of protest against, what he calls forced occupation of Kashmir by India, the secessionist hawk has found a unique via media to justify the assistance being provided by Government of India. He does not consider the whopping funds, either announced or in the pipeline, as bonafide responsibility of a gracious nation towards its subjects but as a matter of right, not as citizens of India but the residents of a place that India is occupying by force.
Geelani browbeats New Delhi by saying, “Government (the Centre) is not going to do any favour for them (flood sufferers) because on the one hand for the last six decades India is looting the natural resources of Jammu and Kashmir and on the other hand the government collects huge taxes from the same traders and shopkeepers who were affected by recent flood.” The shameless and ungrateful old man, who owes his longevity to extra-ordinary medicare ensured by the state at the expense of poor tax payer, musters guts to call 1.2 billion Indian nation as plunderer. He won’t have dared say a word, had the gutless Indian leaders not pampered him and his ilk in Kashmir for the past six and half decades. This sort of language is being spoken by lot many people in Kashmir who have amassed huge assets and wealth, disproportionate to known source of their income, without feeling accountable either to their own poor brethren in the Valley or Enforcement Directorate or Income Tax Department. The Government of India has miserably failed in expediting investigations and judicial process against Geelani for his alleged involvement in money laundering through Hawala channels. This is not by default but with design. The so-called Kashmir policy planners in New Delhi have been instrumental in giving long rope to people like Geelani in a desperate hope of bringing them on negotiation table. This is because of timidity of successive rulers and lack of a well defined policy on Kashmir. Geelani and his likes have taken Indian weakness as license to browbeat and blackmail New Delhi at will.
It is this overconfidence that gives Geelani cheeks to warn Indian leadership that if they ‘failed in putting in place concrete measures to rehabilitee the flood affected traders, farmers and the people who have been rendered homeless before the winter session starts; and also if they are not in a position to do that or any other reason is there, then they (Government of India) could issue me (Geelani) documents so that he (Geelani) can collect donations in the foreign countries’ for helping ‘his people’ to start a new life and compensate their lossess.
He goes on saying that the ‘world community, particularly Muslim countries, have taken serious notice of the destruction caused by floods and the response for help is encouraging’.
Seeking financial assistance or being on the pay rolls of anti-India lobbies is not new for secessionists like Geelani. They have been doing so shamelessly and unabatedly to remain in comfort zone at the cost of poor Kashmiris, who have been made to rehabiliate grave yards, which they fondly call as ‘Mazar-e-Shauda’, a testimonial to run their enterprises.
Syed Ali Geelani has never ever been asked by ‘his people’ or the Indian law enforcing agencies as to where the huge funds received through Hawala channels have gone? Ajit Kumar Singh, a Research Fellow of Institute for Conflict Management has carried out a detailed study over terror funding in Kashmir.
He gives a vivid description of the sordid tale in a write up in ‘Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal’, and says “…The most prominent among Kashmir’s separatists, Syed Ali Geelani, has been under scrutiny for a long time.
The first First Information Report (FIR) against him, in relation to Hawala transactions, was filed in 1997, alleging that he had violated the Foreign Contributions (Regulation) Act (FCRA) by receiving Rs 194 million from Saudi Arabia; and a separate donation of Rs 100 million from the Kashmir American Council (KAC).
These payments, the FIR alleged, were collected from Hawala dealers in New Delhi…Geelani was brought under the scanner again following disclosures made by his close aide, Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, arrested on 22nd January, 2011, in connection with an alleged Hawala racket, used to channel money to HM terrorists in the Kashmir Valley. Rs 2.1 million were recovered from Bhatt in this connection.
Bhatt told interrogators that he had received Rs 4 million from his Hawala contact in mid-September 2010.
The money was to be delivered to another contact at Srinagar’s Jhelum Valley College “for onward delivery to S.A.S. Geelani”. Bhat also claimed that Geelani received sums of Rs 2 million six times between October 2009 and 9th-10th January, 2011…” This is just tip of iceberg.
And, with such serious allegations against him, it is intriguing why the Governments in New Delhi or in Srinagar are shying away in taking action and unveiling the mask from people like Geelani.
They have not only exploited fellow brethren in Kashmir for personal gains, they will feel no inhibition in moving around the world with a ‘begging bowl’, that too while sitting on elephant backs, to make life of their generations comfortable. Earlier, it was for liberating Kashmir and now it is for rehabilitating the flood sufferers.
The Nautanki of the people like Geelani will only sap the enthusiasm of fellow compatriots across the nation to stand by their suffering brethren in Kashmir, physically and materially, at this hour of crisis.