After J&K criminal investigation department (CID) investigations revealed Sajad Ahmad Bazaz having ties to Pakistan’s ISI and terrorist organisations, the Jammu and Kashmir Bank fired him on Saturday.
According to officials, Bazaz was fired because he endangered the nation’s security.
Bazaz was a ’embedded asset of the terrorist-separatist networks working on behalf of the ISI,’ according to sources of the J&K CID, who spoke with India Today. It was stated that he had been placed there by the ISI in 1990 via Fayaz Kaloo, publisher and proprietor of the area daily newspaper Greater Kashmir.
Sajad Ahmad Bazaz joined J&K Bank in 1990 as a cashier/clerk and was later elevated to head of internal communication in 2004. According to intelligence sources, he was given a unique editing position that is akin to a gazette officer.
Bazaz worked as a correspondent-cum-columnist for Greater Kashmir as a full-time employee of the J&K Bank. His news articles and editorials almost exclusively focus on defending and elevating the secessionist-terrorist effort in J&K. Some are subtly disguised, while others are hardly there. Sajad supported Pakistani positions on human rights abuses, tripartite talks, and UN interference in Kashmir through his on-the-ground reporting and opinion pieces published in his weekly columns titled ‘Off The Record’ and ‘What’s Up’ in Greater Kashmir, an intelligence source informed India Today.
According to the report, Sajad Ahmad Bazaz exploited his position at the J&K Bank to pay for selected local newspapers and news magazines with advertising money taken directly from the bank’s funds.
‘The data pertaining to advertisement money paid from financial year 2015 to 2023 shows that Greater Kashmir has got disproportionately a higher and favourable allotment than all others, including newspapers at par with it in terms of reach and circulation. It is very relevant to bring on record that in and around 2010-12 there was a sudden spurt of rabidly pro-Pakistan news magazines and newspapers other than Greater Kashmir. Discreet investigation has revealed that this is in a major way attributable to Sajad Ahmad Bazaz,’ said the sources.
According to intelligence sources who described Bazaz’s ties to terrorist organisations, he was a ‘critical component of the overall terror ecosystem carefully nurtured by the ISI and terrorist organisations.’ He often communicated with Shabir Bukhari, a person with connections to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).
A recognised assistant of Mushtaq Latram, leader of the Al-Umar terrorist group, and a close friend of Masood Azhar, the head of the JeM, Shabir Hussain Buch was another person Bazaz frequently corresponded with.
The investigators also disclosed Sajad Ahmad Bazaz’s unexplained rise from clerk to Editor in J&K Bank, a position that required a gazetted equivalent. As it requested applications from the cadre of cashier-cum-clerks to apply for the newly established post of editor, it claimed that the eligibility requirements for the position were customised to bring him in.
Additionally, the requirement for a written test was dropped. Second, Sajad was given an unfair advantage by having the catchment area limited to the cashier/clerk cadre. The selection of Bazaz was made despite the fact that ‘he was rabidly against the Indian state and an open secessionist’ by the interview panel, which included the then-chairman of the bank MY Khan, director Haseeb Drabu, chief general manager PZ Lateef, and deputy general manager MA Shah.
According to intelligence sources, Bazaz is the only officer in the history of the J&K Bank to have been promoted three times despite not having completed the CAIIB exam as of yet, which is a flagrant breach of the law.
68 accounts were owned and managed by Sajad Ahmad Bazaz in just J&K Bank.
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