NIA quizzes shop owner over transactions linked to CRPF personnel in espionage case
Telegraph | 3 June 2025
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) officers on Monday questioned the owner of a Mominpore shop from where multiple transactions were allegedly made to Moti Ram Jat, a CRPF personnel arrested for his alleged involvement in espionage activities.
The NIA officers also questioned a staff member of a hotel who is a former army official and suspected of having provided a SIM card to a man whose name emerged in an espionage case in Punjab, sources in the central agency said.
Mohammad Wakil, the former army man now working as a security official at a Topsia hotel, was questioned for several hours by multiple central agencies seeking more information about his suspected links to the espionage in Punjab’s Pathankot.
Sources said the NIA had found that Wakil helped a man in Calcutta who was accused in the Pathankot espionage case by providing him a SIM card.
Wakil, however, has claimed innocence about the man’s background.
The owner of the shop in Mominpore was also examined for several hours before being released late on Monday.
On April 22, 26 people were killed in a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, a popular tourist destination in Jammu and Kashmir. The agencies have not been able to arrest anyone involved in the attack.
The central agency said that there could be a possibility of Jat sharing vital information of national importance that could have helped the terrorists carry out the attack.
Sources said NIA officers have collected CCTV footage from the shop at Mominpore, which is being analysed to check the movement of people visiting the shop.
“Multiple suspicious transactions have been made from that shop to Jat’s account. We are trying to find out on whose behalf these transactions were made and who was sourcing the money,” said an NIA officer.