'Shehla Rashid took Rs 3 crore to join politics': Father demands probe against her NGOs

Shehla, a former JNU student leader, joined politics and became a founding member of JK Political Movement

A family dispute between student activist and former JNU Students Union vice-president Shehla Rashid and her father Abdul Rashid Shora has snowballed into a major controversy with the two parties washing their dirty linen in public about the Shoras and politics.

While the father accused his daughter of having grabbed Hawala funds worth crores from an alleged terror financer arrested by the NIA, the daughter claims to be victim of a patriarchal family head.

On Monday Shora sought a probe into his daughter’s finances, accusing her of receiving Rs 3 crore from two people under investigation for terror funding. The father had also claimed that he was facing a threat to his life from Shehla, her sister, her mother and her armed security guard.

Shora claimed that his daughter had been first offered the amount through him to join a party that was to be floated by former IAS officer Shah Faesal. While he refused, his daughter allegedly accepted the “deal”.

“Shehla threatened me not to disclose this deal to anybody or my meeting with Zahoor Watali and Engineer Rashid, otherwise my life would be in danger,” the dad claimed.

Shehla, a vocal critic of the Narendra Modi government, hit back and accused that her father used to harass her mother her sister and herself ever since she came to senses. “Many of you must have come across a video of my biological father making wild allegations against me and my mum & sis. To keep it short and straight, he's a wife-beater and an abusive, depraved man. We finally decided to act against him, and this stunt is a reaction to that,” she tweeted.

To corroborate her allegations, Shehla posted a 2005 letter purportedly written by masjid committee of Chanpora in Srinagar, where the family lived, to her father asking him to present himself to clarify regarding his “abusive behavior” towards his wife and daughters.

“….As reported you are misbehaving, abusing and using unparliamentarily language with your family. ….you are threatening your family of dire consequences and heavy losses as is evident from copy of your letter addressed to Asma and Shehla (copy enclosed for your reference),” the letter reads.

The Committee had asked Shora to present himself before them on 27th February 2005 “so that they can narrow down the differences within the family.”

32-year-old Shehla emerged as a prominent face after fellow JNU students Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested for a February 2016 protest against the execution of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

In January 2019, she joined active politics as a member of fellow Kashmiri and former IAS officer Shah Faesal’s new launched J&K People’s Movement. However, she quit the party last October claiming that the Center was trying to portray “normalcy” to the world by holding BDC polls in J&K and that she “cannot be party to the exercise of legitimizing the brutal suppression of my people”.

Shehla, who has 7.61 lakh Twitter followers, has emerged as a major social media influencer, even though her views have often landed her in controversies. She is facing sedition charges for accusing the army of torturing people.