J&K politician Shah Faesal booked under stringent PSA

SRINAGAR: Bureaucrat-turnedpolitician Shah Faesal, in preventive custody for the last six months, has been charged under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) that allows Jammu and Kashmir authorities to detain a person for up to two years without trial, officials familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

Faesal, who is being held at the MLA Hostel in Srinagar, was served the order late on Friday, the officials cited above said on condition of anonymity. A senior official in the J&K administration confirmed that the former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and head of the Jammu & Kashmir People’s Movement (JKPM) was booked under PSA.

Faesal was handed over the dossier, which specifies the reasons for the PSA being invoked against him, at midnight by a senior government official at MLA Hostel. According to an official, the PSA dossier cites Faesal’s “anti government” posts and alliance with former legislator engineer Shiekh Abdul Rashid as grounds for his detention.

Rashid is currently lodged at Tihar jail in connection with a terror funding case.

“The dossier had 27 pages of print outs of his Facebook/tweets on Kashmir,” said Faesal’s close associate, who is privy to the contents of the dossier.

Officials said Faesal will continue to be detained at the MLA

hostel. Faesal is the latest politician to be detained under the PSA, which allows the authorities to detain a person for at least three months and as long as two years without trial.

The administration has also booked former chief ministers Omar Abdullah of the National Conference (NC), Mehbooba Mufti of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and one other politician each from their parties under the PSA this month after they had spent six months in preventive custody under the Code of Criminal Procedure. Abdullah’s father Farooq had his arrest under the PSA extended by three months in December.

They are among numerous politicians in Jammu and Kashmir detained in August, when the Centre revoked the region’s special status under Article 370 of the Constitution and decided to bifurcate the state into two Union territories -- J&K and Ladakh.

Senior PDP leader and former minister Naeem Akhtar was also booked under PSA by the administration in February. Others who have been charged under the Act are Ali Mohammed Sagar and Hilal Lone, both of the NC, and Sartaj Madni of the PDP. Faesal was detained at the Delhi airport on August 14, 2019, after he reached the capital from Srinagar and was sent back to Kashmir. He was detained at the Centaur Hotel and later at MLA Hostel. Officials said he will continue to be detained at the MLA Hostel.

The J&K administration had justified the detention of Faesal, who has been vocal against the Centre’s move to nullify Article 370, saying he instigated people gathered at Srinagar airport against the sovereignty and integrity of the country.

In his first public meeting after quitting as an IAS officer, Faesal had said Kashmir was a political problem that could not be solved by development packages. India and Pakistan should hold a dialogue to resolve the issue, he said.

The 2009 IAS topper resigned from government service in 2018 over “unabated killings in Kashmir and absence of a credible political initiative” from the Centre. Faesal likened his tenure in the bureaucracy to a jail term. He launched his political party in March last year. His party was preparing for the assembly polls before the state was bifurcated into two Union territories.