Shah Faesal, Ex-IAS And J-K Leader, Detained Under Public Safety Act

Former IAS officer and Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement leader Shah Faesal was booked under the tough Public Safety Act on Saturday. An NDTV report said that Faesal has been detained. Faesal is the latest Kashmiri leader who has been booked under the stringent Public Safety Act. Apart from Shah Faesal, other leaders who have been booked under PSA are: Omar Abdullah, his father Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Ali Mohammed Sagar, Naeem Akhtar, Sartaj Madani and Hilal Lone. Under the tough regulations of the Public Safety Act, the authorities can detain a person for up to three months without any trail along with multiple extensions.

Shah Faesal, who was the 2010 topper of the Indian Administrative Services exams, had quit his job to float a political party - Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement last year. After the Narendra Modi government abrogated Article 370, Shah Faesal was detained at the Delhi Airport on August 14 and brought back to Srinagar. The official had said that Faesal was fleeing to London.

Faesal had criticised the "unprecedented" lock-down in the Valley with its eight million population "incarcerated" like never before post the removal of special status to Jammu and Kashmir, provided under Article 370. He was among the last political leaders who were placed under house arrest.

Recently, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah’s sister moved Supreme Court against detaining her brother under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA). Calling his detention grave violation of constitutional rights, Sara Abdullah Pilot demanded him to be immediately released. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioner, mentioned the matter for urgent listing before a bench headed by Justice N V Ramana.

"The order conflates 'Governmental policy' with the 'Indian State', suggesting that any opposition to the former constitutes a threat to the latter. This is wholly antithetical to a democratic polity and undermines the Indian Constitution," the petition says.

"...a reference to all the public statements and messages posted by the detinue during the period up to his first detention would reveal that he kept calling for peace and co-operation - messages which in Gandhi's India cannot remotely affect public order."

The dossier accuses the 49-year-old Omar Abdullah of holding the ability to attract voters to polling booths despite poll boycott calls and the potential for channelling energies of public for any cause.

Sheikh Abdullah brought the Public Safety Act as a deterrent against timber smugglers as it provided a jail term, without a trial, for up to two years. However, this Act came in handy for the police and security forces during the early 1990s when militancy erupted in the state.