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Hawala racket: Court sends former Congress minister, aide to 5-day police remand
A fast-track court on Monday sent former Congress minister Jatinder Singh, alias Babu Singh, and his close aide Mohammad Shareef Shah to five-day police remand in connection with a hawala racket.
A fast-track court on Monday sent former Congress minister Jatinder Singh, alias Babu Singh, and his close aide Mohammad Shareef Shah to five-day police remand in connection with a hawala racket.
The presiding officer of the fast-track court, Khalil Choudhary (having charge of special judge NIA) granted five days’ police remand of former minister Jatinder Singh and his accomplice Mohammad Shareef Shah, said officials.
The court passed the order following an application filed on Monday by sub-divisional police officer of Gandhi Nagar police station Dy SP Sachit Sharma.
In the application, police had sought the remand of Mohammad Shareef Shah of Kokernag in Anantnag and Jatinder Singh of ward number 1 in Kathua town for a period of 10 days.
The police had produced a CD file before the court to seek 10 days’ police remand.
Shah and former minister Babu Singh were booked under FIR number 73/2022 for the commission of an offence under Section 17/18 of the Unlawful Activities Act at Gandhi Nagar police station.
The police on Saturday had nabbed the fugitive former minister from Keerian Gandial village in Kathua district.
The former Congress minister was absconding since March 31 after police recovered nearly ₹7 lakh of hawala money and arrested a Kashmiri man, “who was given the task by the former minister”.
“With the arrest of Babu Singh, we will be able to establish the entire network of hawala money, which had been sent to Jammu to fund and fuel terrorism in the region,” said a senior police officer.
On March 31on the basis of a specific input that some unknown persons were going to receive hawala money at Jammu, several checking points were established in the Jammu city.
On suspicion, police party arrested a man identified as Mohammad Shareef Shah, 64, of Anantnag district, from Gandhi Nagar area. The police recovered ₹6,90,000 from Shah’s possession.
On questioning, he disclosed that he was tasked by Jatinder Singh to collect money from Omer at Srinagar. Shareef had disclosed the names of his local and foreign associates as Javed and Khatib, residents of PoK and Farooq Khan of Toronto in Canada.
Following the arrest of Shareef, three other men identified as Sardar Gurdev Singh of Jammu, Sidhant Sharma of Kathua and Mohammad Sharief Sartaj of Jammu were also detained for questioning regarding the hawala transaction.
Jatinder Singh had initially launched the International Democratic Party and then contested and won the 2002 assembly elections from Kathua.
Subsequently, he was inducted as power minister in the Congress-PDP coalition government.
