Six days after pro-Pakistan separatist leader Masarat Alam Bhat was arrested on charges of sedition and anti-national activities, he has been booked under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) and hurriedly shifted to Kot Blawal jail in Jammu. This is seen as a major climbdown by Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, who had to buckle under BJP pressure to re-arrest Masarat, whom he had set free on March 7 as a gesture to reach out to separatists.
Masarat was taken into custody on April 17, two days after he showed up in a separatist rally chanting pro-Pakistan slogans. Pakistan’s national flags were also waved in the rally held to greet hardline Hurriyat Conference leader Syed Ali Geelani’s return to Srinagar after his winter sojourn in Delhi. A district court had remanded him in six-day police custody. Geelani has called for a daylong shutdown on Saturday against slapping of the PSA on Masarat.
He has called for demonstrations after Friday prayer. Masarat (43) had incited several hundred youngsters and Geelani supporters with his pro-Pakistani sloganeering. He invoked Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and vowed to continue struggle for “Kashmir’s freedom and its merger with Pakistan”. Budgam District Magistrate Mir Altaf Ahmad confirmed that Masarat has been booked under the PSA.
The DM recommends to the Government to book a person under the provisions of the PSA after police furnish dossier stating the grounds for detention. Under the PSA, a person can be detained for a period up to two years without trial if the authorities suspect that the individual poses threat to the security of the State. The DM signed the detention order late on Wednesday evening. The Chief Judicial Magistrate has reserved orders on Masarat’s bail plea for April 25. His counsel has dismissed charges and described them as frivolous and concocted.
Observers say that Mufti had hurried to release Masarat at the culmination of first week of his Government in order to offset the negative campaign against his party’s alliance with the BJP. However, the attempt boomeranged when Masarat, known as the architect of 2010 uprising in Kashmir, returned to his anti-India antics. Following his sloganeering and waving Pakistani flags, Mufti declared that “law would take its own course” after the BJP exerted tremendous pressure.
“Mufti could not withstand the pressure as he did when Masarat was released on March 7. This shows how difficult it is to run a government in J&K with the BJP in alliance,” said Mudassir Ahmad, a political analyst. Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), a prominent rights group has slammed the Government on re-arresting Masarat under the PSA. “By this preventive detention order, the Government has bypassed the judicial process and undermined its own institutions. The Government in Jammu & Kashmir as usual has chosen to act as surrogates, and pay heed to the fascist groups and the jingoistic media of India, who earlier ensured hanging of Mohammad Afzal Guru for satisfying ‘collective conscience’ of Indian people and now Masarat Alam too is being victimized to address the same collective conscience,” Khurram Parvez, spokesman of CCS, said in a statement.