Srinagar: In a bizarre development, Jammu and Kashmir’s three-time former chief minister and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah was detained under the state’s stringent Public Safety Act on Monday.
The Public Safety Act was first introduced by Sheikh Abdullah’s government in 1978, initially to discourage timber smuggling but was then often used by successive state governments, including Dr Abdullah’s, against political opponents, drawing severe criticism from human rights groups at home and abroad. Dr Abdullah, Lok Sabha member from Srinagar, is the first former CM against whom the PSA has been invoked in the state.
The National Conference has said it will move the courts over Dr Abdullah being detained under the Public Safety Act.
It claimed that the state was virtually under “martial law” and all democratic and constitutional principles and rights of people have been violated.
Under the PSA, a person can be detained up to a period of two years without seeking a formal trial.
However, such detentions are subject to periodic reviews by an official screening committee and can be challenged in the courts as well.
In 2012, the state legislature amended the PSA by relaxing some strict provisions. In the case of first-time offenders or individuals who “act against the security of the state” for the first time, the detention period for them was reduced from two years to six months. However, the option of extending the term of detention to two years was kept open, “if there is no improvement in the conduct of the detainee.”
In June this year, Amnesty International, in a report termed the PSA a ‘lawless law’, and said that it circumvents the criminal justice system in J&K "to undermine accountability, transparency and respect for human rights”.
Official sources in Srinagar said that 81-year-old Dr Abdullah, who is suffering from kidney disorder and many other ailments and was under house arrest since August 5, when the Centre stripped J&K of its special status and split the state into two union territories, was formally detained under the PSA early on Monday. Srinagar’s deputy commissioner Shahid Iqbal Chaudhary signed the order on Sunday night after getting a letter from the J&K police recommending Dr Abdullah’s detention under the PSA, the sources said.
The road leading to Dr Abdullah’s Gupkar Road residence here was sealed by the police overnight by laying concertina razor wire on it on both sides. A bunker vehicle of the security forces continued to block the entrance to Dr Abdullah’s residence.
