Shabir Shah held, 2 booked under Public Safety Act

SRINAGAR: Separatist leader Shabir Shah, a witness to the killing of his colleague Sheikh Abdul Aziz, was arrested at Rawalpora on Friday. Shah had gone underground when the administration started preventive arrests on Sunday night. The police are still hunting for Nayeem Khan and Masarat Aalam.

The government has already booked Asiya Andrabi and Ayaz Akbar under the Public Safety Act, a law under which government can imprison a person for two years without trial. The state administration is planning to amend it so that anybody who is detained under PSA can be kept in prisons outside J&K.

Sources told ET that governor N N Vohra would issue an ordinance that would permit the system to transport PSA detainees outside the state. Though this provision exists earlier in the act, it was amended by the state legislature in 2000 and now the governor���s administration is keen to reverse that change.

Reports from districts said police and security agencies have arrested at least 200 youth already. Some of them have been accused of stone pelting. Most were part of the massive mass mobilisation that the Valley witnessed in June-August.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Yasin Malik have already been arrested. Initially two of them were driven to Gulmarg but after the ailing hawk started suffering from high-altitude, they were driven to Dachigam where they were kept separated from each other.

As per latest reports, they are in Zabarwan Hills, not far away from Raj Bhawan.

This is for the first time that Mirwaiz has been arrested since he donned the mantle of chief preacher. Union minister Prof Saifuddin Soz met them on Thursday. The details of the meeting are not known.