Intelligence agencies are probing the role of Kashmiri students enrolled at various universities and educational institutions who could have been instrumental in garnering support for commemorating the hanging of Afzal Guru at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
The JNU is in the news for an event organised by the students union where slogans were allegedly raised against hanging of convicted terrorist Afzal Guru. Earlier, similar protests were allegedly reported from university campus in Hyderabad.
“There is a pattern in the events in support of a convicted terrorist. International NGOs will now join the debate claiming democratic voices are being muzzled. The design is to erode the credibility of the Government,” an intelligence official said.
Support for a dead issue like the hanging of Afzal by students in far off campuses is an indication that they are being fed by outfits inimical to national interest, the official said.
Meanwhile, the organiser of the event at JNU is a Jaish-e-Mohammad sympathiser, who had traveled to Pakistan over a month back and possible terror funding behind the programme at the varsity is under probe. Call detail records of the accused student leaders and Kashmiri students are also being scanned, the official said.
Pakistan-based Jamat-Ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Hafeez Sayeed has been harping in speeches on the “freedom” of Kashmir and asserting that Muslims from Eastern India and Deccan, including Hyderabad are coming in support of the partition theory.
In his addresses at Nazaria-e-Pakistan conferences held across Pakistan, Sayeed claimed the support it has gathered for the Kashmir cause from places like Hyderabad, Deccan and Eastern India where Pakistani flags are being made and “kalmas” are read.
Lambasting the proposition of converting the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu & Kashmir as an international boundary in the back channel talks between India and Pakistan, Sayeed said at a Nazaria-e-Pakistan conference that the only issue that can discussed is the “occupation of Hyderabad, Deccan and Junagarh.”
In his address at the Social Media Conference held at Markaz-e-Qadsia in Lahore on December 26 and 27, the JuD chief exhorted his followers across the subcontinent to maximise the use of social networking sites to scale up its outreach.
For furthering its jehadi agenda, the JuD has recently recruited estimated 3,000-4,000 hackers, mostly educated Muslims from educational campuses across Asia, including in India.
A section of the Kashmiri students in various educational institutions and aligned with the separatist groups may be behind the recent spurt in support for convicted terrorist Afzal Guru’s hanging.
Separatist groups like Hurriyat Conference and mainstream political parties from Jammu & Kashmir have already voiced their opinion against students accused of sedition.
The intelligence agencies are also looking into spiraling up of crimes relating to hacking of email accounts and credit card frauds from certain pockets in Ranchi and Dumka in the last few months. The Bangladesh-based terror Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh has also been active in Dumka and Sahebganj.
