NIA questions former J&K finmin in terror funding case

SRINAGAR/ NEW DELHI: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) interrogated a former PDP minister in Mehbooba Mufti's coalition government, Altaf Bukhari, on Thursday, in a terror funding case, sources have confirmed.
Bukhari, a well-known neta, had been pipped to be PDP and National Conference's consensus candidate for chief minister when the BJP-PDP coalition government gave way in June 2018.
But governor SP Malik had then dissolved the state assembly, thereby blocking any chances of Bukhari becoming J&K CM. PDP dismissed the 60-year-old Bukhari from party's basic membership in January 2019 for "anti-party activities".
Bukhari runs FIL Industries in Kashmir, makers of apple concentrates. His younger brother Tariq Bukhari is also likely to be questioned in the terror-funding case in a few days, NIA sources said.
A politician businessman, Bukhari joined PDP in 2005, and won from Amira Kadal constituency in the assembly elections of 2014. He was a minister in the coalition government headed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed but was dropped from the cabinet after Mehbooba took over following the party founder and her father's death in 2016.
In February 2017, Bukhari was re-inducted into the cabinet and made education minister and allotted the finance ministry portfolio in March 2018 after veteran Haseeb Drabu was also dropped from the cabinet. In November 2018, Altaf Bukhari was seen as consensus CM candidate of PDP and the Abdullahs' National Conference.
The Bukharis belong to Ludoora in Baramulla district of north Kashmir but the family has long moved to Srinagar and lives at Sheikh Bagh in the heart of the city.
Altaf Bukhari has been on the agencies' radar. A carpet businessman Nasir Shafi Mir had been apprehended by Delhi police in February 2006 in Bukhari's vehicle on Delhi's Pandara Road with Rs 55 lakh and explosives. Jailed, Mir was released on bail a year later. But he jumped bail and fled to Dubai. Last year, NIA raided the houses of Nasir Mir alias Babullo at Lal Bazar and Nishat in Srinagar. He is still a wanted in the said case and has been declared as fugitive, sources said.