The Jammu and Kashmir administration booked former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, along with two other politicians, under the Public Safety Act (PSA). General Secretary and former minister of National Conference Ali Muhammad Sagar and Sartaj Madni of the People’s Democratic Party were booked under the PSA immediately after their release from preventive detention. Sagar wields a large support base in Srinagar and Madani is the maternal uncle of Mehbooba Mufti.
Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti were already under house arrest since August 5, booked under Section 107 and Section 151 for the apprehension of breaching peace. Their six-month preventive detention was ending on Thursday. Mufti is detained at a government guest house in Lal Chowk while Abdullah is detained at Dogra-era palace Hari Niwas, which was also a torture centre of armed forces in 1990s.
The four leaders were among several to be detained after the nullification of article 370 to prevent protests against the abrogation of the special status of Jammu & Kashmir. In December, Farooq Abdullah’s detention was extended by three months under the PSA.
The Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act is a preventive detention law that allows for detention without trial for up to two years if a person is deemed to be acting “in any manner prejudicial to the security of the state”. Under the law, a person is taken into custody in order to prevent them from acting in a manner that is prejudicial to ‘the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order’. The detainee is also denied legal aid, and does not have the right to legal representation or to challenge the arrest before the Advisory Board unless sufficient grounds can be established that the detention is illegal. It bears significant similarities to the National Security Act that is used by other states for preventive detention.
The law was first introduced by the Sheikh Abdullah government in 1978 to use against timber smugglers. However, the then president of Kashmir Motor Drivers Association (KMDA), Ghulam Nabi, was the first person to be booked under the law. Nabi stood against Abdullah in the previous election on Janta Party ticket. The political abuse of the Act has continued to this day.
The PSA is one of the few controversial state laws that were retained by the Centre under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act that led to the bifurcation of the state into two union territories. A recent report by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Person’s (APDP) and J&K Coalition of Civil Society (J&KCCS) stated that 662 people were booked under the PSA in 2019. Out of them, 412 were detained after the abrogation of the Article 370. But, the actual number of cases seems to be higher as there is no clear statement by the government. Syeed Tassadque Hussain, a senior advocate at J&K High Court, has filed a writ petition in the high court challenging the continuation of the PSA.
Image Source: Indian Express