- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Chandrashekar Bhat
By Chandrashekar Bhat
THE US authorities and Google have been approached by India’s Jammu and Kashmir police to share email contents exchanged by Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra, a close aide of People’s Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti, with Pakistan-based secessionist leaders and terrorists, a charge-sheet filed by the police has said.
The charge-sheet filed by the Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) wing of the police said Parra established a nexus with terrorists to seek their backing for his political gains and reciprocated it by providing a range of help and support which led to terror strikes.
It said Parra used to share information through several email services, of which three have been brought on record.
“A request has been forwarded through proper channels to Google US as per their standard forms and norms for providing details/contents of emails exchanged by Parra through his three email IDs,” the 19-page charge-sheet filed before a Srinagar court said.
“Google US has been requested to preserve the data of the emails (of Parra) …and Google has conveyed compliance,” it said.
The CIK, which is part of the Jammu and Kashmir Police’s criminal investigation department, has also sought WhatsApp chats and data stored in the iCloud account connected to his mobile phone and the details are awaited.
Parra’s lawyer and the PDP have denied all the allegations levelled against him and termed them “politically motivated”.
Mufti has also alleged that the police were “torturing” Parra and keeping him in “inhuman conditions.”
The former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir tweeted earlier that Parra was being “persecuted and tortured to admit the false allegations. Since an admission didn’t happen, he is being kept under inhuman conditions. This investigation has been fraudulent and politically motivated from day one.”
However, the police, who charged Parra under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, said in the charge-sheet that the US authorities have been approached through the medium of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) via India’s Ministry of External Affairs for providing necessary assistance in the case.
This is the second charge-sheet against Parra, who was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in November last year. In January this year, Parra was granted bail by the court in Jammu but was immediately detained by the CIK and brought to Srinagar, and at present, he is in judicial custody.
In March this year, he was charge-sheeted by the NIA, and it was alleged that Parra had paid Rs 50 million (£484219) to the son-in-law of hardline Hurriyat Conference leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani for keeping Kashmir in turmoil after the death of Burhan Wani, the poster boy of the Hizbul Mujahideen, in 2016.
