Masarat Alam held again after release from jail

Hardline separatist leader Masarat Alam Bhat, who spearheaded the 2010 summer agitation, was on Tuesday re-arrested by the police immediately after he was released on the order of Jammu and Kashmir High Court.

Reports said Bhat was released from Kot Balwal jail after High Court order was shown to the jail authorities.

However, according to spokesman of his Muslim League who was within the jail premises, a few policemen in civvies, present inside the jail, re-arrested him.

While condemning the re-arrest of 45-year-old Bhat, the spokesman claimed he was taken to some unknown destination.

Masarat, detained under the PSA on April 18 two days after Pakistani flags were displayed and anti-national slogans raised at a reception rally he led in Srinagar for Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Geelani, had challenged his detention order in the High Court.
Justice Hasnain Masoodi of J&K High Court had quashed the PSA detention of the separatist leader on August 21.

While quashing Masarat’s detention under PSA, the Court had noted that preventive detention was undemocratic and repugnant to rule of law.

45-year-old Masarat, who was instrumental in triggering 2010 stone-pelting agitation in which more than 100 people were killed, was released after 53 months on the orders of PDP patriarch and Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

Release of Masarat, being seen as a possible successor to Geelani, created a furore across the country and had figured in Parliament proceedings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi making a statement on the floor of the House after opposition parties cornered him over the issue.

Hoisting of Pakistani flags and chanting of anti-India slogans renewed calls for Masarat’s re-arrest. A serious controversy had plagued the relations between the Peoples Democratic Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party over Masarat’s release.

The controversy died down only after his arrest on April 18. Alam was lodged in Jammu’s Kot Balwal jail immediately after he was arrested on April 17. Alam is facing charges of “sedition” and “waging war against the state.”