JAMMU: Indian authorities have arrested two former top elected officials of occupied Kashmir under a controversial law that allows them to imprison someone for up to two years without trial, officials said on Friday.

Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah were arres­ted as their six-month-old det­ention ended on Thurs­day, a top civil administrator and top police officers said.

They were among thousands of people detained when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government stripped occupied Jammu and Kashmir of semi-autonomy and statehood, downgrading them into two federal territories last August.

Since then, they had been held under house arrest under a preventive custody law that allows authorities to detain people who could commit offences for up to six months.

Two other leaders also put behind bars; the law used for the purpose allows authorities to jail someone for up to two years without trial

On Thursday, Prime Minister Modi gave indication of their arrest when he said in parliament that the two leaders had in the past made statements that could incite unrest in the disputed region.

Modi cited Mehbooba Mufti as accusing India of cheating Kashmir last summer. He said Omar Abdullah had remarked that ending Kashmir’s autonomy would cause an earthquake that would separate Kashmir from India, though there is no indication Abdullah made any such statement.

“Some people here complain some leaders have been incarcerated. Meh­booba Mufti said, ‘Kashmir made a mistake by joining India’. Are you justifying such kind of speech?” Modi said in parliament.

Omar Abdullah’s father, Farooq Abdullah, was the first pro-India politician arrested under the Public Safety Act, under which rights activists say more than 20,000 Kashmiris have been detained in the last two decades. They are considered pro-India as they never supported Kashmir’s independence from India or its merger with Pakistan. They are the top leaders of the National Conference, the party that has governed the India-held region for decades since 1947.

Farooq Abdullah, also a former top elected official of Jammu and Kashmir, is an 82-year-old member of India’s parliament.

Mufti, 60, heads the Peoples Democratic Party, which was a coalition partner of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the region for nearly two years after the 2016 state elections. Mufti headed the coalition government.

Two former state lawmakers and party leaders, Ali Mohammed Sagar of the NC and Sartaj Madani of the PDP, also were detained under the controversial Public Security Act on Wednesday.

Amnesty International has called the Public Safety Act a “lawless law”, and rig­hts groups say India has used it to stifle dissent and circumvent the criminal justice system, undermining accou­ntability, transparency and respect for human rights.

On Friday, the main opposition Congress party slammed the government’s decision. “Shocked and devastated by the cruel invocation of the Public Safety Act against Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and others,” said P. Chidambaram, a top party leader.

“Detention without char­ges is the worst abomination in a democracy. When un­just laws are passed or unjust laws are invoked, what option do the people have than to protest peacefully?” Chidambaram tweeted.

Modi’s government sent thousands of additional Indian troops last August to the occupied Kashmir Valley, already one of the world’s most militarised regions, when it revoked Article 370, the constitutional provision that had given held Kashmir some measure of self-rule.

It cut telephone communications, cell coverage, broa­dband internet and cable TV services for the valley’s seven million people.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2020