Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra, the main People’s Democratic Party (PDP) politician arrested by the National Investigative Agency (NIA) on Wednesday, faces charges of using a government vehicle to transport terrorists and conducting negotiations with groups. jihadists on behalf of former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, senior government sources told News18.
The PDP has denied the allegations, and Mufti alleges that he had “earned the ire of a hostile and communal government” for his commitment to democratic politics.
Sources said Parra’s arrest is the result of an investigation into rogue Jammu and Kashmir police officer Davinder Singh, accused of trying to help a Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorist escape through the Line of Control, which expands to a broader inquiry into links between Kashmiri actors and jihadist groups.
The arrest comes ahead of elections for the District Development Councils in Jammu and Kashmir scheduled to begin this weekend, which Parra had submitted documents to challenge.
In a statement posted on social media, Mufti noted that Parra had been hailed by now-Defense Minister Rajnath Singh for helping to strengthen democracy in Kashmir. The PDP and the BJP had teamed up to form the government after the 2016 elections and held power until the central government had to prevail amid mass street protests led by Islamists.
However, government sources said the charges against Parra center on the negotiations he allegedly carried out with commanders from Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in southern Kashmir, the PDP’s most important regional base, in the run-up to the 2014 elections to the Legislative of Jammu and Kashmir. Mounting.
Sources alleged that Parra also had contact with the leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba in southern Kashmir, as part of an ongoing dialogue with the PDP to reduce attacks by Fidayeen’s suicide squads in exchange for reducing counterterrorism operations. .
Government sources said Davinder Singh, who hails from the violence-ravaged Tral district in southern Kashmir, played a role in facilitating these contacts. However, the sources declined to discuss the details of the terrorists Parra allegedly transported, or other details of their activities, saying they could compromise ongoing investigations.
According to intelligence sources, among the key figures Parra allegedly negotiated with in 2015 was the jihadist social media icon Burhan Wani, whose murder by police in the summer of 2016 sparked the violence that led to the collapse of the government.
In essence, intelligence sources said that their negotiations included a promise to reduce operations against Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in exchange for the support of the terrorist group and its parent political organization, Jama’at-e-Islami.
The negotiations are said to have facilitated the electoral victories of the PPD in southern Kashmir, in a campaign marked by intimidation and threats against the rival National Conference.
Following the PPD’s victory in 2016, the party controversially released several Islamist leaders involved in previous large-scale street protests. However, Wani was killed in a police operation targeting another Hizb-ul-Mujahideen figure.
The leaders of the PDP and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen are believed to have started engaging each other in 2003, when key party leaders are said to have started negotiations with their then chief of Kashmir Valley operations, Ghulam Rasool. Khan, also known as ‘Engineer Zamaan’.
Intelligence sources said New Delhi hoped the contacts would help advance from a failed attempt to reignite secret ceasefire negotiations with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen promoted by the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, an effort that collapsed in 2000. in the midst of the murders of several of its members. protagonists.
Sources familiar with the negotiations say the government also hoped to draw the Jama’at-e-Islami into mainstream democratic politics, as it had been before 1989.
Intelligence sources said that in subsequent years, contact between the PDP leaders and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen had been quietly encouraged in the hope of winning.
Previously, the leaders of the National Conference are also believed to have maintained contact with jihadist commanders, sometimes in the interest of their personal safety. The youngest son of Hizb chief Shah, Syed Abdul Wahid, earned a medical degree, and then a job at a prestigious government medical hospital, with a little help from the Intelligence Bureau, according to the former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing. AS Dulat. Two of Wahid’s brothers, Syed Shahid Yousuf and Syed Shakeel Yusuf, also got government jobs.
“Frankly,” said a senior intelligence official, “it would be difficult to find someone in Jammu and Kashmir politics, in any party, who has not had some degree of contact with terrorists, often with implicit sanction from the authorities. Parra’s arrest may lead to many skeletons coming out of many closets. “
In some cases, there are suggestions that these complex contacts between politicians, intelligence services and terrorists were manipulated to serve personal ends. Davinder Singh, for example, is alleged to have taken bribes to transport the police officer, turned Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorist Naveed Mushtaq, to safety, while telling the Research and Analysis wing that he was recruiting the jihadist for an operation through the Line of Control.
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