Strike against Yasin's arrest affects life in Kashmir

Normal life in Kashmir remained crippled on Friday due to the strike called by separatists against the arrest of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) cadres.

Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), a conglomerate of separatists headed by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Malik had called for a shutdown. While Malik was arrested by the police on February 22, he was booked under public safety act (PSA) on Thursday and shifted to Kotbalwal jail in Jammu.

The PSA, one of the forms of administrative detention, allows preventive detention for people against whom there may be no recognised criminal offence. It provides for detention for a maximum of two years in the case of persons acting in any manner “prejudicial to the security of the state”. Some of the recently detained senior JeI leaders have also been booked under the PSA and were shifted to jails outside the valley.

Geelani and Mirwaiz have been placed under house arrest at their respective residences with authorities imposing restrictions in Maisuma, Rainawari, Khanyar, M.R. Gunj and Safa Kadal areas of old city Srinagar to thwart any protests. Police and paramilitary CRPF were deployed in huge numbers in areas placed under restrictions and also at other vulnerable other parts of the Valley.

Elsewhere in the valley normal life also remained affected due to the strike. Reports said that shops remained closed and government offices witnessed thin attendance in most district headquarters in the Valley.