The police in the Kashmir Valley has arrested several senior separatist leaders and activists in the latest campaign apparently prompted by upsurge in anti-India disturbances, particularly in Srinagar, during which three local youth were killed in police and CRPF actions. A major portion of the summer capital remained under
undeclared curfew for several days after these killings which also closed rest of the Valley in response to a call issued by various separatist parties and groups. While hard-line separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has been detained under the provisions of state’s stringent Public Safety Act (PSA), some of his aides have been put behind the bars on charges of making inflammatory speeches or inciting trouble on the streets. He has been shifted to a makeshift sub-jail set up in a tourist cottage at picturesque Chashmashahi overlooking Dal Lake here from a joint interrogation where he spent a couple of days after his arrest from frontier Kupwara district. The octogenarian leader was detained at this place also during the 2008 Amarnath shrine land row.
Under the PSA, a stringent law, a person can be jailed for a period up to two years without initiating a formal trial.
Moulana Muhammad Abdullah Tari, a close associate of J&K Democratic Freedom Party leader Syed Shabir Ahmed Shah, and several second-rung leaders of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq-led Hurriyat Conference faction have been taken into “preventive custody.”
Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik has been lodged in Srinagar’s central prison after he along with dozens of supporters courted arrest as part of a “jail bharo” campaign underway to highlight and protest the increased incidence of human rights violations allegedly by the security forces. Mr Shah has been incarcerated for quite some time after his arrest and subsequent detention under the provisions of PSA. Late on Wednesday evening, police parties raided the houses of Javed Ahmed Mir, Farooq Ahmed Dar and Shafa’at Shangloo, familiar faces of the JKLF to arrest them but they had already gone underground in anticipation of such action.