‘The bench maintained that the detention order against him has outlived its life’
Gowhar Nazir
Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court ordered the government to release Muslim League Chairman Masarat Alam Bhat on Tuesday.
The Jammu and Kashmir High Court quashes PSA detention of Masarat Alam, says it amounts to ‘injustice’.
While quashing the detention order, the court stressed that a person can be detained under PSA (Public Safety Act) for a maximum period of two years only.
A division bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Rajnesh Oswal directed the authorities to release Masarat Alam from preventive custody forthwith, if he is not required in any other case.
Alam was detained under PSA by District Magistrate Kupwara on 11th September 2019 and was booked under 36th PSA.
Masarat Alam Bhat, a Kashmiri separatist leader currently General Secretary of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Alam is also the Chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Muslim League.
JK Authorities believe Masarat Alam played a crucial role in organising the protests in 2016 when the Hizbul poster boy, Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter with the security forces on July 8, 2016.
In the year 2016, a total of 98 people were killed and over 4,000 injured in bloody clashes between the security forces and the unruly mobs across Kashmir.
In the same year many people lost their vision either completely or partially due to the use of pellet gunshots by security forces while controlling the mobs throughout the Valley.
Alam, who has been accused in many FIRs for disturbing peace and posing a threat to law and order, has spent over 24 years in jail, most of them in preventive custody under PSA.
The draconian Act is slapped on him every time his detention is quashed by a court.
Masarat Alam holds the unpleasant record of having been detained under the harsh Public Safety Act (PSA) for 36 times.
