Kerala LeT got Pak funds via Hong Kong

The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has discovered that the funds from Pakistan for LeT’s operations in Kerala were being route through Hong Kong. Though reports had appeared earlier about Al-Qaeda and other terror outfits routing funds for subversive operations through Hong Kong but the link to Kerala was revealed only recently.

Reports from Delhi say that the RAW has already extended its investigations into the hawala racket behind terror funding to Hong Kong in the light of the new finding. It is said that RAW officials have already reached Hong Kong for further inquiries regarding this. Reports also said that the new findings pointed at the possibility that LeT operations in Kerala could have connections that went beyond the Inter-Services Intelligence.

According to reports, the RAW had come across the information on the Hong Kong link of terror money for Kerala from Pakistan and Dubai after two months of eves-dropping exercise on the telephone conversations between suspected hawala dealers. The sleuths are yet to find out the quantum of money transferred through this route and also the duration over which the transactions had been going on.

At the same time, Intelligence agencies have found that four members of the LeT team in Dubai who had been under the watch of the RAW had escaped into Pakistan. The agency had recently learned that there were four Keralites, with high academic degrees obtained from foreign universities, were members of this team. However, it is not yet clear whether there was any Keralite among the four who had escaped into Pakistan.

Meanwhile, LeT’s South India commander Thadiyantavide Nazeer has told the National Investigating Agency (NIA) that 26 groups of LeT are operating inside India and that terror groups are actively present in all the four southern states. He also told the police that these groups were receiving ISI assistance and guidance for attaining the main objective of “liberation” of Kashmir.

A Bangalore report said that Nazeer had told the NIA that LeT’s Oman-based funds-manager Sarfaraz Nawaz, hailing from Kerala’s Ernakulam district, had given him Rs 258,000 for carrying out the blasts in Bangalore in 2008. A part of this fund had directly come from Oman, he said, claiming that he got this information from Haroon, whom he had met while in Bangladesh.

The report said Nazeer, belonging to Kannur, was introduced to Haroon by Nawaz, who was secretly brought to Bangalore from Muscat by RAW sleuths last year. Nazeer also said that he had got training in handling modern weapons like AK-47 and explosives in Kashmir. Nazeer was arrested from India-Bangladesh border in November last.