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Enforcement directorate summons Shabir Shah's 19-year-old daughter who's Valley topper

Sama, daughter of separatist leader Shabir Shah, had earned praise across the separatist-mainstream divide when she topped the CBSE exams

Muzaffar Raina Srinagar Published 22.04.19, 01:09 AM
Shabir Shah

Shabir Shah (Wikipedia)

Sama Shabir, daughter of separatist leader Shabir Shah, may have topped the CBSE Class XII exams from the Valley last year but now faces a test she may not be fully prepared for.

The Enforcement Directorate has summoned the 19-year-old to its Delhi office for questioning in a money-laundering case filed against her father.

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Sama, who is studying law in Britain, missed the April 18 date the ED had set for her but will be home in June, her mother Bilqees Shah said.

The agency has already attached Shah’s home in the uptown Rawalpora locality, which is registered in the name of his wife and two daughters.

“She (Sama) is obviously perturbed. She called me to ask what this was all about and why she was being dragged into the case,” Bilqees, a doctor in the government health department, told The Telegraph.

“The tragedy is that this case was filed in 2005 (actually 2003) when she was only four or five years old. Technically, they are summoning a four or five-year-old in the case because that was her age at the time.”

Bilqees said the summons had come from ED deputy director Rakesh Kumar last week.

“The day after I received the summons, I wrote to the ED saying she (Sama) is studying outside the country and should be exempted from appearing,” she said.

“She is due to appear in her first-year exams and cannot come. She will be coming in June after her exams are over.”

Shah, often called the Nelson Mandela of Kashmir because of the 32 years he is said to have spent in jail in the state and outside, was last arrested in July 2017. He is in Delhi’s Tihar jail. Amnesty International once described him as a “prisoner of conscience”.

Sama had earned praise across the separatist-mainstream divide in Kashmir when she topped the CBSE exams among Valley students, scoring 489 out of 500, despite her father’s continued imprisonment.

She had described to this newspaper last year how she had seen her father being taken away and spent hours in prison waiting rooms for a glimpse of him.

Sama had said that she aspired to become a lawyer to fight the “injustices” faced by her family and Kashmiris in general.

“I have personally seen a lot of injustice and my family has suffered a lot. I want to be a lawyer so that I can be of help to people,” she had said.

Mehbooba Mufti, who was the chief minister then, had tweeted: “Her hard work & determination has helped her overcome all odds & she is truly an inspiration for the youth of our state.”

In March, the ED attached Shah’s immovable property in a terror-funding case. Bilqees said her father had bought the property in 1999 and later gifted it to his other daughters. Bilqees’s sisters gifted it to her and her daughters.

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