In a major trouble for Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Thursday (February 6) booked the former chief ministers of erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir under Public Safety Act (PSA), sources said.
Under PSA, the Jammu and Kashmir administration can keep both Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti in jail for 3 months without trial. Notably, both these leaders have been under detention for the last six months since the abrogation of Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, on August 5, 2019.
The 49-year-old National Conference leader Omar Abdullah and 60-year-old Mehbooba Mufti were taken into preventive custody hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre scrapped Article 370 and bifurcated the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories - Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
Sources told Zee Media that both Abdullah and Mehbooba will continue to be lodged in Hari Niwas and a bungalow at M A road in Srinagar respectively. The MHA had also slapped PSA on National Conference general secretary Ali Muhammad Sagar, former NC MLC Bashir Veeri and PDP leader Sartaj Madni after their release from MLA Hostel in Srinagar on Thursday.
On September 16, 2019, the Centre had revealed that former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah had been detained under the PSA. The veteran National Conference leader has been kept under house arrest since August 5, 2019.
Though Farooq Abdullah has been detained under PSA, there is no bar on him meeting relatives and friends at his Srinagar residence, which has been converted into a subsidiary jail.
