Gautam Navlakha, the civil rights activist who was raided by Pune Police yesterday, attended events organized by Ghulam Nabi Fai who was sentenced to two years of jail by the United States of America for concealing the fact that Fai’s organization, Kashmiri American Council (KAC), was funded by Pakistani Spy Agency, ISI, to deliberately tilt USA’s policy regarding Kashmir against India.

US attorney Neil MacBride accused Fai of working as a front for Pakistani intelligence and promoting ISI’s propaganda on Kashmir. Fai admitted that he was receiving funds from the government of Pakistan and did not disclose the fact because he knew it would have a negative impact on his credibility as a supposed independent advocate for Kashmir.

The events organized by Fai had a very obvious anti-India slant and the India scribes and intellectuals often helped portray India as an oppressive occupying force in Kashmir. A resolution adopted at one of its conference organized in 2010 which was attended by Indian intellectuals, including Gautam Navlakha, said that the participants “unanimously” expressed concern over the deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir and implored the Indian government to withdraw the Army from civilian areas. It also demanded an impartial commission to investigate “killings” in a transparent manner.

Despite the accusations against Fai, Navlakha’s faith in him remained steadfast. “I know Fai. I have enjoyed his hospitality and my conversations with him. Whatever the nature of funding may be, in my eyes his conviction as a Kashmiri remains impeccable,” Navlakha said.

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Navlakha did not stop at that. He suggested that the US authorities had magnified the crime that “Fai Sahib” committed and went on to suggest that Fai may have been set up by US authorities at the behest of India.

As per reports, the ISI vetted the list of Indians to be invited at Fai’s events and the names included Justice Sachar and Bhasin Chatterji apart from Gautam Navlakha. Many suspect that the intellectuals were invited at the event by Fai to give Americans the impression that liberals in India are in favour of Kashmir seceding from the Indian union. There are enough hints to suggest that Fai was using them as ‘useful idiots’.

Gautam Navlakha was one of the activists who was raided by Pune Police in connection with the violence at Bhima Koregaon and an alleged assassination plot to murder Prime Minister Modi. The ‘civil society’ has immediately come to their defence and branded the raids an evidence of the undeclared emergency enforced by the Modi government.