Six Detained Under PSA in Kashmir for Alleged Incitement During Student Protest

SRINAGAR: J&K authorities announced Friday detentions of six people under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) for allegedly inciting "law and order disturbances" and "acts of vandalism" during a recent students' protest in Kashmir's Sopore. The students were protesting against a schoolteacher accused of molestation and later taken into custody. Police said Umar Akbar Hajam, Salman Ahmed Shala, Altaf Ahmed Sheikh, Mubashir Ahmed Gilkar, Muzammil Mushtaq Changa, and Majid Firdous Dar were detained after authorisation from the district magistrate, as required under PSA. They have been jailed in Jammu's Doda. All hail from Sopore, the police said, adding none is a student. "These miscreants were involved in attempting to disturb peace during a recent protest by students. Their activities posed a serious threat to public order and safety," a police statement said, adding more individuals involved in the April 13 trouble are being identified for prosecution, including under PSA. In a warning to the public, the police asked them to "stay away from unlawful activities and not to fall prey to instigation by anti-social elements". The police have not mentioned the specific PSA clause under which the six have been booked. The law allows detentions for six months without trial if an accused is a threat to the security of the State, with extensions of six months. Under a PSA clause on threat to public order, preventive detentions are allowed up to three months, with extensions of three months. Earlier, PSA allowed detentions without trials up to two years. But an amendment during a previous stint of J&K CM Omar Abdullah in 2011 reduced the detention period to six months from two years for threat to security of the State and from one year to three months for threat to public order.