Lashkar Funds Helped Build Mosque in Haryana, Paid for Marriage of Imam's Daughters: NIA

New Delhi: A mosque in Palwal district of Haryana was allegedly built from funds supplied by Hafiz Saeed-led Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Pakistan, the National Investigation Agency found while probing its imam in a terror funding case.

Mohammed Salman had allegedly funneled money from Lahore-based Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), an NGO set up by Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), Lashkar’s parent organisation for the building of the Khulafa-e-Rashideen masjid at Uttawar village in the Palwal district, officials told Indian Express.

Salman (52) was arrested along with two others - Mohammed Salim and Sajjad Abdul Wani - on September 26 for allegedly receiving terror funding. During Salman’s interrogation, NIA officials said they found that Salman got in touch with LeT men when he was in Dubai.

“The organisation, we have learnt, gave him Rs 70 lakh to build a mosque in Uttawar. It even gave him money for the marriage of his daughters. We are now probing from where the mosque has been receiving its donations and how this money is being used,” an NIA officer told the newspaper.

The investigation agency is now questioning office bearers of the mosque and scrutinising the account books, details of donations and documents seized.

Officials said Salman, who lives in Delhi, was among the largest contributors to the fund raised to construct the mosque, while the land for it was arranged by villagers. But they clarified that the villagers did not have any inkling about the source of funding and believed it to be his own money.

According to NIA, Salman had incurred big losses in his taxi and dairy product businesses a few years ago, after which he went to Dubai and Saudi Arabia, where he got radicalized. The funds, they alleged, were sent through hawala channels. The FIF is a front-end organisation of the LeT and it is placed on the list of terrorist organisations.

The villagers in Uttawar, however, rejected the NIA story and said investigators have been fed false information because the mosque is embroiled in a land dispute battle in court.

“No one in the village can believe such a thing. Salman comes from a very reputed family in the village. No one from his family has ever had a criminal case against them,” one Khalid Hussain told Indian Express.