Lashkar hawala conduit arrested from Uttarakhand

New Delhi: The NIA, on Wednesday, arrested a hawala operator from Uttarakhand, who was acting as a conduit for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to fund terror activities in the nation.

The 22-year-old Abdul Samad, from Haridwar, was arrested on Monday and produced before an NIA court that allowed the agency to question him for six days, an official said.

The official said Samad was arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into Lashkar activities across the country.

Samad was one of the leading hawala operators operating in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the official said.

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"He was acting as a conduit of an LeT financier based in Saudi Arabia through his cousin based there," the official said.

The agency claimed that Samad in November 2017 collected Rs 350,000 from hawala operators in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar. The cash was delivered to co-accused, Shaikh Abdul Naeem alias Sohel Khan, a resident of Aurangabad in Maharashtra, who was arrested earlier.

Naeem, an active Lashkar member with bases in Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, worked on the directions of his Pakistani handler Abdul alias Rehan.

Samad is the fifth accused arrested in this case. The agency had earlier arrested Dhannu Raja and Mahfooz Alan, both residents of Gopalganj in Bihar, and Touseef Ahmed Malik, resident of Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir.

with IANS inputs...