On Sunday, officials said that the Jammu Kashmir Police has moved the home department for granting sanction for prosecution against nine people in a case related to “selling of MBBS seats in Pakistan to Kashmiri students” and using the money “to support and fund terrorism,” as per a report by PTI.
Reportedly the nine accused also include a leader of a Hurriyat constituent and an advocate from South Kashmir.
The PTI report suggests that the case was registered by the Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK), a branch of the police’s CID, in July last year after reliable sources informed them that several people, including some Hurriyat leaders, “were hand in glove with some educational consultancies and were selling Pakistan-based MBBS seats and seats in other professional courses in many colleges and universities.”
At least four people were arrested by the CIK in August and it also named two of their accomplices who are at present in Pakistan and Pakistan administered Kashmir, the report says.
The report says that the CIK, after a thorough investigation, “moved the Jammu and Kashmir home department and sought sanction for prosecution against the nine people under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), mandated according to the act.”
The report also mentions that the officials say that more evidence has surfaced during the probe in which it was also found that the money gathered from admissions had been passed on to some militant groups as well as secessionist groups.
The chief of one of Hurriyat’s constituents — Mohammad Akbar Bhat alias Zaffar Bhat of the Salvation Front — is among the nine against whom the sanction has been sought under the stringent UAPA, as per the report.
Meanwhile, the four arrested on August 18 were –
1. Mohammad Akbar Bhat alias Zaffar Bhat, Chairman Salvation Movement, son of Abdul Jabbar, resident of Usmania Colony Baghi-Mehtab in uptown Srinagar
2. Fatima Shah, wife of Nisar Ahmad Shah of Palhalan, Pattan in North Kashmir’s Baramulla, at present 172, Nundreshi Colony near Sham Lal Pump, Bemina in Srinagar
3. Mohammad Abdullah Shah, son of Ghulam Ahmad Shah of Kulpora Salkoot in north Kashmir’s Kupwara
4. Sabzar Ahmad Sheikh, son of Bashir Ahmad Sheikh, a resident of Nowgam, Shangus in South Kashmir’s Anantnag
The other two accomplices mentioned in the report, and who are reportedly in Pakistan were Altaf Ahmad Bhat, son of Abdul Jabar Bhat of Shakarpora Bagh-i-Mehtab in Srinagar, presently in Baheria town of Karachi in Pakistan and brother of accused Zafar Akbar Bhat and Manzoor Ahmad Shah, son of Ghulam Ahmad Shah of Kulpora Salkote in Kupwara, at present Gulmohar Colony, near High Court Rawalpindi in Pakistan.
The officials, the report suggests, said that cost of seats ranged between Rs 10 to Rs 12 lakhs and in “some cases, the price was brought down on ‘sifarish’ (recommendation) of senior Hurriyat leaders, and depending upon the political heft of these secessionist leader, who intervened, concessions were extended to the aspiring student and his family”.
CIK sleuths cracked the whip in August and arrested Bhat and three others for “selling” MBBS seats in Pakistan to Kashmiri students and using the money to support and fund militancy, the report reads.
During the probe, it surfaced that “MBBS and other professional degree related seats in many cases were preferentially given to those students who were close to family members or relatives of killed militants.”
There were also cases where the quota allotted to individual Hurriyat leaders were sold to anxious parents who wished their children to have MBBS and other professional degrees in one way or the other.
The report says that more than 80 cases were studied in which either the students or their parents were examined for academic years between 2014-18. Searches were undertaken in about a dozen premises in the Kashmir Valley.
The officials said that Bhat’s brother Altaf Ahmad Bhat and another arrested person’s brother Manzoor Ahmad Shah, were coordinating from across the border and facilitating the admissions. The two, who have been named accused in the case, had exfiltrated to Pakistan during the early 1990s for arms and ammunition training and have settled down on the other side, the report claims.