Mehbooba Mufti

Srinagar, Dec. 21: Mehbooba Mufti has done it earlier too but this time round she has come out strongly in favour of the Hurriyat hawks.

The chief of the People’s Democratic Party, often accused of playing the “soft separatism” card, yesterday hit out at the government for arresting hardliners at the forefront of the five-month agitation that had paralysed the Valley.

Mehbooba told the Centre’s interlocutors that holding Ashraf Sahrai, Ghulam Nabi Sumji, Shafi Reshi, Peer Saifullah, General Musa and Massarat Alam as “political prisoners” did not augur well for the reconciliation process.

Alam, in particular, was seen as the face of the agitation. He had gone into hiding, from where he issued “Quit Kashmir” protest calendars that were instrumental in shutting down the Valley. He was arrested two months ago and booked under the Public Safety Act, which can allow his detention without trial for up to two years.

At a meeting with Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and M.M. Ansari, Mehbooba said: “In the wake of a disastrous summer, it was expected the government would relax its brutal repression to provide relief to people who lost their dear ones, suffered physical, economic and psychological trauma. Rather, it further strengthened the draconian measures and almost institutionalised them.”

Mehbooba said even teenagers had not been spared and talked of the continuing detention of Hurriyat leaders. “Such a scenario is the antithesis to an atmosphere of dialogue and reconciliation,” she said, adding these leaders were being denied their liberties.

Citing the arrest and detention of high court bar association president Mian Qayoom, she claimed the judicial process was being subverted through a “high-handed and lawless state apparatus”.

Qayoom was allegedly harassed and manhandled in court last week. “If the Bar president can face such humiliation at the hands of the state and the judiciary, how can ordinary citizens expect justice in the face of a government determined to deny it?” she asked.

This is the first time the PDP is championing the cause of Alam and other hawks after the recent agitation.

Mehbooba accused the ruling National Conference of running an “extortion industry”, in an apparent reference to the alleged demands for money from parents of youth arrested by police. “How can a generation faced with such existential threat from the state have any faith in a civilised resolution process, howsoever well-intentioned it might be?” she wondered.