Masrat Alam release: Move began during Omar Abdullah, President's rule

NEW DELHI: The release of Masrat Alam became a classic whodunit case on Tuesday as letters surfaced to indicate the situation for his release was created while J&K was under President’s rule as well as during the tenure of Omar Abdullah as CM, while the Centre claimed it never had any information of the developments.

“We were not informed by the J&K Governor or the J&K government under the Omar or Mufti regime,” sources close to Home Minister Rajnath Singh told ET on Tuesday. It emerged on Tuesday that the process to release was initiated on February 4 while the state was under Central rule and the original slip-up happened in December when Abdullah was still in-charge as the CM.

The DM of Jammu issued an order to the SSP, Jammu, on March 7, 2015, asking him to release Alam and referred to a letter written by the Principal Secretary (Home) of J&K on Feb 4 to the DM saying the order of preventive detention “had not been approved by the government”. It says the order of preventive detention passed by the Jammu DM on December 9, 2014, regarding Alam should have been sent for approval to the J&K home department within 12 days as per the law but it was received after 23 days — on December 31. It remains unclear why the DM did not send the order to the J&K home department within 12 days — which meant “the detention order had become non-est in the eyes of law”, as per the Feb 4 communiqué.