J&K govt foils separatists' meet

The Jammu and Kashmir government on Monday foiled the proposed meeting called by separatist leaders in Srinagar.

This comes in the backdrop of searches conducted by the National Investigating Agency on the residences of some Hurriyat leaders and businessmen.

The meeting was scheduled to be held in the uptown Hyderpora residence of hardline Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Geelani to discuss the fallout of the searches and a strategy against such situations. The separatists were later scheduled to address a press conference. The meeting, besides the separatists, was to be attended by members of the business community.

However, a large posse of police personnel was posted outside Geelani’s residence to thwart the meeting.

While moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was placed under house arrest at his Nigeen residence, pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik was detained at his Maisuma home.
Scores of other Hurriyat leaders were also detained ahead of the meeting, police said.

In a joint statement, Geelani, Farooq and Malik said barring them from holding meetings had become a norm for the PDP-led state government, who had to “keep up the farce of normalcy through repression at the bidding of its masters in New Delhi”.

Referring to the searches, they said such a move to “intimidate and harass” separatist leaders and activists were the Centre’s “acceptance that it had not been able to politically defeat the people’s struggle for freedom in Jammu and Kashmir”.

The separatists have called for protests across the Valley after the Friday prayers against the “witch-hunt, coercion and intimidation of resistance activists, leaders and members of the business community”.

The NIA searched 27 locations of separatist leaders and businessmen over the weekend in Kashmir, Jammu, Haryana and New Delhi, and seized nearly Rs 1.50 crore, besides various property documents and other items.