Yasin Malik booked under PSA, shifted to Jammu jail

Pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Yasin Malik was booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) by the authorities and shifted to Jammu jail.

Malik was arrested by police on February 22 from his Maisuma residence and was taken to the Kothibagh Police Station. He has now been shifted to Kot Balwal jail in Jammu.

A JKLF spokesman said today (Thursday) morning, Malik was informed that he has been booked under PSA and will be shifted to Kotbalwal jail. He strongly condemned the “arbitrary arrest” and slapping of PSA against a political leader.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has also filed a plea in the J&K High Court seeking transfer of cases against Malik from Srinagar to Jammu. The high court chief justice Gita Mittal has now sought objections from Malik on the plea on next date of hearing on March 11.

Malik is the main accused in the kidnapping of Rubiya Sayeed, daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and killing of five Air Force personnel in Srinagar in 1990.

Immediately after the news spread, a spontaneous shutdown was observed in Maisuma area near city center Lal Chowk.

The PSA, one of the forms of administrative detention, ostensibly enacted by National Conference founder and then chief minister late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, to take action against the timber mafia, 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”.

According to the 2010 Amnesty report ‘A Lawless Law: Detentions under the PSA’, 10,000-20,000 people have been detained under this preventive detention law since it was enacted in 1978