Srinagar: The National Investigation Agency on Thursday arrested a second son of Syed Salahuddin, tightening the screws on Hizbul Mujahideen's PoK-based chief.
Syed Shakeel Yousuf's arrest came on a day the security forces picked up relatives of several top militants for questioning, apparently in retaliation to the abduction of a policeman's son in Tral, south Kashmir, on Wednesday.
Yousuf, 48, a laboratory technician at the government-run Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, was picked up in the early hours from his home in Srinagar's Ram Bagh locality in connection with a terror-funding case.
Ten months earlier, the agency had arrested another of Salahuddin's five sons, Syed Shahid Yousuf, an employee with the state government's education department, in connection with the same case. The 42-year-old was chargesheeted in April and is in Delhi's Tihar Jail.
Police sources said that among those detained for questioning on Thursday was 70-year-old Asadullah Naikoo, father of Hizb's Valley chief Riyaz Naikoo. He was picked up in Pulwama district.
Local people said the father and two brothers of another Hizb militant, Lateef Tiger, were detained.
An agency spokesperson said the case against Shakeel relates to "transfer of funds by Pakistan-based terrorists to Jammu and Kashmir through hawala channels".
He said this was part of "a criminal conspiracy hatched with some operatives in India to fuel and fund secessionist and terrorist activities in J&K".
The Centre had unleashed the NIA on the separatists after the 2016 summer agitation, tasking it with tracking the funding of militancy through hawala channels.
Shakeel and Shahid are accused in a case dating from 2011, their involvement being alleged only after six others, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani's close aide Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, were chargesheeted.
Bhat has refused to plead guilty and is facing trial. In June, a special NIA court convicted three of the accused - Mohammad Sidiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Faroqo Dagga - after they pleaded guilty. The other two, Mohammad Maqbool Pandit and Aijaz Ahmad Bhat, are in hiding.
According to the agency spokesperson, Shakeel's involvement in "raising, receiving, collecting funds from terrorist organisations through their active cadres from Saudi Arabia" had surfaced during investigations. "He received money through (a money-transfer service) several times. The money was sent by Aijaz Ahmad Bhat (one of those chargesheeted but in hiding)," he said.
Shakeel had earlier been summoned by the NIA for questioning but did not appear before the agency. The agency secured a non-bailable warrant from the special NIA court in Patiala House, New Delhi, before arresting him, the spokesperson said.
"He is being brought to Delhi. He will be produced before the special court to seek his police custody," he said.
The separatist Joint Resistance Leadership accused the agency of framing Shakeel to settle political scores.
Salahuddin, whose real name is Mohammed Yusuf Shah, has been declared a "specially designated global terrorist" by the US state department. Besides heading Hizb, he is chief of the United Jihad Council, a conglomerate of militant groups. On Wednesday, armed militants had kidnapped Asif Rafiq, a BSc agriculture student and son of a policeman, from his home.
