Srinagar, August 02, 2018 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, in yet another anti-Kashmir move, Governor NN Vohra has removed the clause from the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA) to allow the authorities to shift Kashmiris, detained under PSA, outside Jammu and Kashmir in jails in India.
The move is aimed at putting the Kashmiri prisoners through harsh conditions in Indian jails. As per the notification issued by Law Secretary Abdul Majid Butt, the Governor at the behest of Hindu extremist government in New Delhi has amended the PSA through an Act as per which the provision relating to detention of prisoners under Section 10 has been deleted.
The notification reads that, “Amendment has been made in section 10 Act VI of 1978 and in Section 10 of Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978, the proviso thereto shall be omitted”.
Section 10 of the PSA reads that any person in respect of whom a detention order has been made under Section 8 shall be liable to detained at such place which the authorities may decide provided the detainees who are permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir are not lodged in jails outside Jammu and Kashmir.
The PSA has been seen as an abusive and dictatorial act, which was largely used for detaining timber-smugglers before the start of mass uprising in 1989, but now it is used to book Kashmiris, mostly boys, after labelling them as stone pelters. Deputy Inspector General of Prisons, MS Lone, said that the enforcement of the law would ensure that some of the prisoners are shifted to jails outside the occupied territory.
He said that as of now, the prisoners from the Kashmir Valley were at the most being lodged in the jails in Jammu and not outside the occupied territory. That could change now, he added. Human rights activist, Mohammad Ahsan Untoo, maintained that he sees the new regulation “as both draconian and dictatorial”.
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