Hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani and separatist leader Masarat Alam were put on house arrest on Thursday night following Centre’s stern direction to Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad to take action against separatist leaders who waved Pakistani flags and chanted anti-India slogans at a rally in Srinagar. Geelani and Masarat have been detained to prevent their participation in a rally in Tral town of Pulwama district on Friday.
Taking exception to the rally held to greet Syed Ali Geelani on his return from New Delhi after a gap of over three months, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh asked Mufti for immediate and strict action against the separatists involved in anti-India sloganeering. Shortly after the message came, the authorities lodged a case against Masarat Alam Bhat under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and placed him under house arrest.
Though the Chief Minister sought to underplay the incident, he promised action according to law. Speaking to reporters in Anantnag, Mufti said he did not know for sure what had happened (in the rally). “I do not know for sure. I believe the law will take its own course and whosoever has committed a crime will be dealt according to the law,” he said.
Reports said that Singh spoke to Mufti late on Wednesday night and asked him to take action against separatists who waved Pakistani flags and shouted anti-India slogans. Singh said national security would not be compromised at any cost.
Thousands of people gathered in Hyderpora locality to greet the 84-year-old hardline Hurriyat Conference leader Geelani who spends winters in New Delhi, due to several ailments.
Geelani’s party had announced a “welcome programme” on his arrival. As slogan-shouting youngsters atop vehicles accompanied Geelani’s cavalcade to his residence, the police allowed their advance, unlike in the past when Geelani was taken into custody at the airport itself and detained at his residence.
Geelani was accompanied by Masarat Alam Bhat, the controversial 43-year-old Muslim league leader, whose release last month evoked sharp criticism from nationalist parties including coalition partner BJP and the Opposition Congress.
After Geelani’s speech, Bhat charged up the gathering with pro-Pakistan slogans. He even invoked Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Sayeed and said that the relationship of Kashmiris with him was based on faith. “Pakistan se rishta kya, la Ilah Illallah” (What is our relation with PakistanIJ There is no God but Allah).
A defiant Bhat said there was nothing new in waving Pakistani flags in Kashmir. “It has been happening since 1947,” he said while explaining that he did not personally wave any flag in the rally.
Reacting to the filing of an FIR against him Bhat said that it was wrong to infer that registering a case against a separatist would end the “freedom struggle in Kashmir”. “Kashmir is an issue and we want its resolution. This issue will re-surface and re-emerge every-time,” he said.
Interestingly, authorities filed a case against Dukhtaran-e-Millat chief Asiya Andrabi last month when she hoisted a Pakistani flag in Srinagar on March 23 that is celebrated as Pakistan Day.
Sources said that authorities were likely to detain Geelani besides other prominent separatist leaders to prevent their march to restive Tral town on April 17 where a 24-year-old man Muhammad Khalid Wani was killed in an encounter with the Army on Monday.
Wani, elder brother of a top-ranking Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan was killed in Buchoo-Kamla forests in the area. The Army claimed that Wani was an over-ground worker of the outfit who had taken three youngsters to the forest for recruitment into militancy. The youths are now in police custody.
The Chief Minister has described the incident as “unfortunate” and promised to find out the facts. Meanwhile, life remained paralyzed in Tral for the third consecutive day on Thursday. The authorities prevented separatist leaders including Bhat, Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah from going to the area to meet the family of the deceased.
Geelani has called for a march to Tral on Friday. Sources said that additional deployments of security forces have been dispatched to the area to prevent any law and order problem.