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Jack, John, Alpha assisted NIA in nailing Yasin Malik


Date:- 27 May 2022


NIA code-named protected witnesses to make case against JKLF chief watertight

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) could manage to nail banned Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik in the terror funding case with the help of key witnesses, whom the investigator protected by code-naming them, officials in the agency said.

They said in view of the possibility of their being killed, given the nature of the case and the kind of people involved, the important protected witnesses were named as “Jack”, “John” and “Alpha” to hide their identities.

Besides the witnesses, the investigating team had seized around 600 electronic devices during its raids at 70 places during the course probe and trial spanning around five years, as the case was first registered by the agency in May 2017, they added.

A special NIA court here sentenced Malik to life imprisonment yesterday, as he had pleaded guilty on all charges framed by the agency.

According to the officials, there were around 25 protected witnesses and among them a few had been given code names, whose depositions were crucial in the court. The case was probed by a NIA team led by Inspector General Anil Shukla, a 1996-batch IPS officer from the AGMUT cadre.

Shukla, who is now posted in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and is seen as a person who ended stone throwing incidents in the Kashmir valley by choking the funds to separatists, had decided to follow the policy of having protected witnesses in the case so that there were no loopholes, the officials said.

According to the officials the special NIA judge largely relied on protected and code-named witnesses among others, who mentioned about the meetings between Syed Ali Shah Geelani, now dead, and Malik in November 2016 along with other Hurriyat leaders calling for protests and shutdown. Another protected witness had stated it was Geelani and Malik who used to send him the protest calendar for publicity in newspapers, they added.

Courtesy: The Tribune India :26th May , 2022