FIF module busted: The hawala headache in Chandini Chowk

New Delhi, Sep 27: The National Investigation Agency busted a mobile of the Falah-e-Insaniyat operating in Delhi. This organisation is the financial wing of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and was once called the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

NIA sources tell OneIndia that this module was in operation for sometime and the members of the module were receiving funds from abroad to further terror activities in India, In the FIR the NIA says that some Delhi-based individuals were receiving funds from the operatives of the FIF operatives based operative and were using the same to further terror activities.

The NIA learnt that most of the money that came into the FIF in Delhi was from a Delhi based Pakistani national. All the transactions were made through hawala and the money was meant to feed the modules of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba in India. Further the NIA has also found a money trail from Pakistan again done through hawala transactions.

Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation is a Lahore, Pakistan based organization established by Jamat-ud- Dawa. It is a front-end organisation of the Lashkar, a terror organisation proscribed under UAPA. It was founded in 1990 by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who is designated as Global Terrorist by the USA.

FIF is placed on the list of terrorist organisations as per entry 33 in the First Schedule to the UAPA read with Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism (Implementation of Security Council Resolutions) Order 2016. Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation was also designated as a Terrorist entity by USA in 2010.
The busting of this module only goes on to show how active the hawala network for terror groups in India still is.

The hawala headache:

Hawala continues to be the primary terror funding source in India till date. Let us date back to some statistics of the early 2000s. There were around 3,000 hawala operatives in the Asian region back then, who would every year bleed the Indian government of Rs 100 billion foreign exchange.

Sources in the Intelligence Bureau's Foreign Intelligence Unit tell OneIndia that the hawala network is worth over Rs 2,000 crore today. While several persons use this network to send money home, there is an active channel run by the likes of Dawood Ibrahim who have dedicated lines to pump in dirty cash. Most of the hawala transactions into India are from Pakistan and UAE, the official also added.

Hawala money makes one of its biggest landing in Delhi, following which it is channelised to other parts of the country. The several interrogation reports in possession of OneIndia reveal that the main operating hub in Delhi remains at Chandini Chowk. Most of the terror operatives visit this area to pick up the cash and then send to the modules across the country.

The hawala network in Delhi is the primary source for terror funding in most parts of the country. When it comes to operations down south the terror operatives rely on the hawala network in Kerala.

Investigators say that the hawala operatives work with codes. For instance, in hawala circles, currency is known as hara. UK pound is called popleen, the Dutch Glider is God, Deutsche Mark is DM and the French Franc is FF.

This is the same network that the operatives of the FIF were using, NIA officials point out. Officials are now trying to find out their point of contact in the hawala circles. Prima facie it appears that the same hawala network operating in Chandini Chowk for the past several decades were behind bringing in the money for the FIF members.