Farooq Abdullah held under J&K's stringent anti-terror PSA

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 (PSA) on Monday.

The PSA 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 Farooq Abdu-llah’s, against political opponents, drawing sev-ere 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’s being detained under the PSA. 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 upto a period of two years without seeking a formal trial. However, such detentionsare 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 Monday. Srinagar’s deputy commissioner Shahid Iqbal Chaudhary signed the order 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. His daughter Safia Khan, who lives next door, has put up a black flag at her residence.

Dr Abdullah’s house is being guarded by the security personnel, including by the Special Services Group (SSG), as he is provided with “Z-Plus” security by the government. Besides being a sitting member of the Lok Sabha, to which he has been elected several times, he has also served as a minister in the earlier Congress-led UPA government at the Centre.

A report said Dr Abdullah’s residence has been declared a “subsidiary jail”. However, there are chances of him being shifted to some other place.  Official sources here said that, as of now, there is no bar on his meeting relatives and friends but only after seeking prior permission. The sources also said Dr Abdullah had been detained under the PSA for a “brief period”, but did not give specifics.

While the authorities are tightlipped on the urgency of detaining the former CM under the PSA, the move is seen by many here in the backdrop of Tamil Nadu’s MDMK leader and Rajya Sabha member Vaiko’s moving a petition in the Supreme Court seeking Dr Abdullah’s release so that he could attend an event in Chennai.

On Monday, the Supreme Court asked the Centre and the J&K administration to respond to a plea seeking Dr Abdullah’s presence. Mr Vaiko, who said he is a close friend of Dr Abdullah for the past four decades, contended that the constitutional rights of the NC leader had been deprived due to his “illegal detention without any authority of law”.

Srinagar was on Monday agog with rumours that the government had decided to slap PSA on Dr Abdullah after he refused to be part of a political process initiated by the Centre furtively to end the stalemate over the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A. Before and immediately after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A, and bifurcating J&K into two UTs, the authorities had detained several hundred leaders and activists of various mainstream and separatist parties and groups, including former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti.

Some of them, and also dozens of separatist activists, trade union leaders, lawyers and members of civil society have formally been detained under the PSA or other relevant laws and lodged in jails and detention centres in J&K and other states.