J&K: Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Expresses Concerns Over Arrest of Separatist Leaders in Decades-Old Cases

New Delhi: Moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Friday (December 12) expressed concern over the reopening of “decades-old” police cases in Jammu and Kashmir which recently led to the arrest of two key separatist faces.

The remarks came days after Shakeel Bakshi, a key Kashmiri separatist ideologue, was arrested by J&K police followed by Javed Ahmad Mir, a former chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) earlier this week.

The two leaders were arrested in an FIR (192/1996) filed under Sections 341, 148, 336, 332 of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC), along with Section 7/27 of the Arms Act and Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The FIR was filed at Sadr police station in Srinagar after violence erupted in the capital city during the funeral of Hilal Beg, the founder of Jammu Kashmir Students Liberation Front, the JKLF’s student wing, on July 17, 1996.

The protesters who reportedly pelted stones at security forces and indulged in arson alleged that Beg was killed in custody, a charge denied by the J&K police. 

A report said that besides Mir and Bakshi, the FIR also names former Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani and moderate Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone, both deceased, and incarcerated separatist leaders Shabir Shah and Nayeem Ahmad Khan for “provoking the crowd” on the fateful day. 

Shah and Khan are languishing in New Delhi’s Tihar jail on charges of terror funding and others.

Earlier this week, Mir and Bakshi surrendered before a Srinagar court after which they were taken into custody by police as “part of an ongoing effort to investigate and bring closure to long-pending cases that date back to the height of militancy in the 1990s”.

Addressing the worshippers at Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid on Friday, Mirwaiz urged the J&K government to “intervene in the continuing process of arrests and detention of individuals who have moved on and are not associated with any form of violence in decades”.

'Deep concern among people'

“There is deep concern among people over the developments taking place in which individuals are being arrested in connection with decades-old cases. This has created a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, especially among those persons and their families who have long since disengaged from past paths,” a statement issued by Mirwaiz’s office said. 

Mir and Bakshi were among a handful of known Kashmiri separatist faces who were out of jail. Before his arrest, Mir had also appeared on a local podcast where he spoke about the conflict in Kashmir, politics and the role of the JKLF. 

Referring to “thousands” of Kashmiri prisoners languishing in jails in and outside J&K, Mirwaiz said that their “prolonged detention” has caused “immense suffering to their families”.

“Arresting more and more people only adds to the woes and pain of Kashmiris,” he said.

Jammu and Kashmir accounted for 35% of all the cases filed under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) with 3,662 persons arrested and booked under the stringent anti terror law from 2019 to 2023, per the latest data presented in the parliament by the Union ministry of home affairs.

Earlier, a Srinagar-based businessman was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for his alleged involvement in the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction case was set free within 24 hours on December 2 by a TADA court in Jammu.  

The Hurriyat chief said that the “continued detention” of Kashmiri people in prisons outside the Union territory has raised “serious humanitarian and legal concerns”.

“Such practices often result in delays in trial proceedings and severely limit family access, running contrary to basic principles of humane treatment and natural justice”, he said.

Mirwaiz urged the elected government led by chief minister Omar Abdullah to review the “old cases” while seeking transfer of detainees to Jammu and Kashmir for “a fairer, faster, and more compassionate process of justice”. 

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