Srinagar: Barely a day after revocation of his PSA detention and subsequent release, IAS topper-turned-politician Dr Shah Faesal was put under house arrest on Thursday.
Dr Faesal’s close aide informed Greater Kashmir that police arrived at his Ompora Budgam residence at around 2:30 pm on Thursday and shifted him to his official residence, J-5 in Srinagar’s Jawahar Nagar area.
Interestingly, J-5 has been the official residence of Dr Faesal from his bureaucratic days, before he ventured into politics and launched his own political party, the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples’ Movement (JKPM).
At J-5, security personnel on guard told this reporter: “Humain order hai kisiko anadar janee ki ijazat nahi hai…(We have orders not to allow anybody inside”.
Repeated attempts to reach police and civil administration didn’t elicit any response. However, a police officer told Greater Kashmir that Faesal has been kept under house arrest.
On 5 August 2019, post abrogation of J&K’s special status, and subsequent bifurcation of the state into two Union Territories, Dr Faesal was among the Kashmir’s mainstream political leadership, which was kept under detention.
Dr Faesal, who was touted as “next bigwig” in Kashmir’s politics was prevented from boarding an international flight to Turkey’s Istanbul from New Delhi’s Indira Gandh’s International Airport on 14 August 2019. Subsequently, he was then flown back to Srinagar and placed under detention at Sher-e-Kashmir International Convention Center (SKICC) along world famous Dal lake, from where he was later shifted to MLA hostel along MA road.
After spending six months under “preventive detention”, PSA was slapped on Dr Faesal in February this year, charging him with advocating “soft separatism” through his articles, tweets and social media posts, which on several occasions, as per his PSA dossier, attracted response amounting to “a potential threat to public order”.
GK
