[18 January 2018] Now
this one is a real deep hole of time but packed with insights.
The name of Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali stuck out, so I googled it. Turns out he is the owner of a multinational group of companies named Trison.
source.
Google "Trison Group Kashmir" and the first article is
this. Excerpts:
He was earlier arrested in 1990 by Jammu and Kashmir police, when some anti-national activists were found present in his house at Bagat Barzulla, Srinagar. He was taken into custody along with Yaseen Malik, Sajjad Gani Lone, Bilal Lone and others and was jailed for eight months at Jammu.
So the Government of India has known
since 1990 that Watali is a separatist and facilitator, but
did nothing about it. WOW.
The NIA statement said that Watali was also accused of travelling on a cancelled/invalid passport despite having full knowledge of its being invalid/cancelled.
“Instead of surrendering the cancelled passport to the authorities, he travelled abroad on cancelled/invalid passport on March 21 last year in violation of the law and again when he tried to do so, his invalid passport was seized at Delhi by the authorities,” NIA said.
Not only did the govt do nothing about it, someone in the govt tipped him off and made him so desperate that he tried to leave the country with a passport
he knew was cancelled. Get it? He knows his passport is cancelled, he knows he is going to get caught at the airport, but decides to take his chances anyway. Do you get how desperate he must have been?
And why do I say he was tipped off? This is in March 2017. Still 2 months away from
India Today's Hurriyat Sting release. The TV release came in first half of May 2017, and NIA action was publicly initiated in second half of May 2017, raids etc started later in the year.
So Watali
knew something in March 2017 before the sting took place in May 2017.
Now, I have always maintained that India Today could not have independently pulled off the sting: for something as comprehensive as that, Indian intelligence had to have helped. The chain of events after the sting confirms that NIA intended to take action, and
brilliantly (I would call it a masterstroke) pre-empted any and all criticism of media backlash by getting the corruption among separatists exposed by the media itself! For any NDTV/The Hindu presstitute to have attempted a whitewashing of separatists, they would have to argue it with India Today, a publication with a formidable presence across all media (TV, newsprint, magazine, even radio (Red FM)).
Coming back to Watali, he is a Kashmiri businessman, highly successful, with interests in everything from local plywood and orchard to land and resorts in New Zealand and Saudi. Even his own business interests aren't all legitimate as company listings for his DIN are facetiously low:
just two companies registered in his name. This is the ideal man to be the conduit for money
and materials between Pakistan and terrorists in Kashmir.
And that's what he did. In 1994 he was arrested for supplying money and arms to a terrorist group named Al Buraq (from this
other article on Watali). This is the same group that pulled off the 7/7 attack on London (2005):
https://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/al-barq
Al-Baraq is a joint Pakistani and Kashmiri terrorist organization that conducts operations in Kashmir. For much of its history, al-Barq was aligned with the Muttahida (United) Jihad Council, a union of fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organizations operating under Pakistani control. Al-Baraq is known to be running effective terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Kashmir. With the closure of the Taliban's and al-Qaeda's Afghani bases, these camps have become notorious for training numerous militants and terrorists for international assaults. The perpetrators of the 7/7/05 London bombings were trained in Pakistani camps run by al-Barq.
Perhaps from the British investigation, GoI also knew that Watali was using his FCRA accounts to transfer money to terrorists in Kashmir:
Watali had a FCNRE account in HSBC, GK-I branch, Delhi, into which large foreign inward remittances were received prior to 2005. Though FCNRE facility is available to those who remain away from India for at least 180 days in a financial year, a scrutiny of his immigration records had revealed that he had not been away from India for as many days during the relevant period.
Still there's no evidence of any meaningful action taken against him.
Conclusion #1: Successive Congress governments knew about, and failed to act against, at least one source of terrorist funding. For decades.
The Daily Excelsior article dropped another name which turns out to be extremely interesting *and* disturbing.
“He owns Trison Group consisting of Kashmir Veener Industry (Plywood), Trison Farms and constructions private limited, Trison International Commercial Brokers, LIC, Dubai, UAE, NZ International Ajman, UAE, Ittefaq Trading and Logistics (Cross LoC trade), Trison Power Private limited and Three Starr Enterprises (wood furniture)”, the NIA sources said.
They said that Zahoor is learnt to have bought some properties outside the state in New Delhi, Gurgaon, Punjab also in close collaboration/partnership with PS Gill, former DG Punjab Police.
Wow, okay. Not outside the realm of possibilities. If the entire defence, intelligence, police, and political network has failed to act against roots of terrorism in Kashmir, it's not unimaginable that terrorists have powerful friends in those establishments. But business associations? This means that the "friendships" are rooted in money after all. So who is this PS Gill?
Paramdeep Singh Gill is a 1974/75 batch IPS of J&K Cadre who is
described thusly by even his admirers:
Referring to former Director General of Police Punjab Paramdeep Singh Gill, Chandel said, “How such a stupendous success has been achieved is a saga of one man’s true grit, personality, and some unusual methods that will outrage civil libertarians. His physical courage and tactical sharpness have won him many professional admirers. Gill is a great nationalist and a natural leader.
"Unusual" is indeed how the earliest mention of PS Gill can be described. In short, in 1997 he tried to pass off the mortal remains of an Indian villager as that of Paul Wells, a victim of the
1995 kidnapping and murder of foreign tourists in Kashmir, one of the watershed moments in history which ended foreign tourism in the state. His goal was to receive a
USD 2 million "prize" set by US Dept of Justice + 2 separate prizes of INR 10 lakhs each set by UDDoJ and GoJ&K for tracing the remains of any of the four hostages whose bodies had not been found. His attempt was foiled when a
DNA test in UK showed that the body belonged to a "South Asian", and not a white dude.
From roughly 1999 through 2007 he was IGP Kashmir. Things were rough in Kashmir at the time and he is said to have been particularly brutal, but his ineffectiveness is plain to see even now. Terrorism kept growing, separatism gained critical momentum, the infamous
Ikhwan were aided in myriad ways which ended up hurting the Indian cause more than helping it.
J&K Secretariat in Srinagar was attacked in 1999 not once but
twice. He was
transferred to Punjab in 2009 jumping over at least 3 superior officers having spent ten years "fighting terrorists".
After that there's no particular note of Gill's work, and he
retired in 2011. Immediately after retirement he is appointed as advisor to Home Ministry of Punjab under SAD. A few months later he joined SAD, contested and lost 2012 elections from
Moga to a
Congress candidate.
The next prominent mention of PS Gill is in 2014, when he is reported to have illegally
have the land records mutated getting him the ownership of 157 acres of environmentally protected public land that was supposed to be shared by all the people of an area. Such an land is called
shamlat deh and illegal occupation of
shamlat deh land is a
common scam in the region. And Gill apparently pulled it off a mere month before he'd contested in 2012, and only after losing did this scam come to light (in 2013). As can be expected, no FIR was filed against him, so no court case either. Even the babu who had mutated records was on suspension for a short while.
Without meaning to write this like a Tarantino movie, it should be noted that PS's father was a Congress MLA from Moga, the family's hometown, killed by militants in 1991, and whose
killers were all acquitted in 2014.
After news of the scam, Gill was
denied the ticket to contest Moga bypolls, so guess what he does? He joins BJP! In Aug 2014,
after Modi has won national elections Amit Shah has firmly taken control of the party, Gill is now a BJP politician. He is credited with helping BJP win 25 seats in Dec 2014 J&K Assembly Elections, and is on his way to becoming Governor of J&K in 2015 to replace NN Vohra, but is
stopped cold by Mehbooba Mufti who cites his closeness to the Abdullah Clan as the reason.
Let's take a step back and summarize the portrait of former Punjab DGP Paramdeep Singh Gill. On the surface he appears to be a nationalist, and someone the Right Wing of India trusts, so much so that his involvement is solicited by Amarnath Yatra board, even though he has joint land deals outside Kashmir with Watali, a separatist with ISI links for funding and harboring terrorists, widely known to have been one since 1996. Despite having spent considerable IPS career in Punjab and
building considerable power in it, he has no standing locally. Not even enough to win MLA elections in his hometown where his own father was shot by terrorists, theoretically validating at least a sympathy votebank.
Vocally nationalist,
jingoistic, greedy and corrupt, unscrupulous enough to do business with terrorists, intelligent and powerful yet unpopular.
Conclusion #2: While BJP under Modi has been successful in getting to the root of Kashmir's terrorist problem, the moles are now making home inside BJP and there's no telling what damage they can do. They have one Doval, but do we know how many PS Gills there are?
Original post by user
le_clochard on
indianews.reddit.com
