Bureaucrat-turned-politician Shah Faesal has been booked under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA), a law that allows detention ranging from three months to 24 months without a trial.

The former IAS officer and head of Jammu & Kashmir People's Movement (JKPM) is the seventh mainstream politician of Kashmir to join the list of leaders booked under the PSA in Jammu and Kashmir.

Shah Faesal
Kashmiri politician Shah Faesal.IANS

Under Section 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), Shah Faesal has been in preventive custody since August 14 last year. He was detained and then moved to the MLA hostel in Srinagar. However, it is yet to be clarified if Faesal will be shifted to home or kept in the MLA hostel sub-jail.

Earlier, the PSA was slapped against former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers - Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, senior Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) leader Naeem Akhtar, National Conference General Secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar, senior PDP leader Sartaj Madni, and Hilal Lone.

Omar's father, three-time former Chief Minister and sitting MP of J&K, Farooq Abdullah is already booked under the stringent law and lodged at his Srinagar residence, which has been designated as a sub-jail.

The Public Safety Act

The PSA is often described as a draconian measure, that allows authorities to detain a person for up to two years without a trial.

The PSA, which came handy for the police force to book separatists and militant sympathisers, has two sections -- 'public order' and 'threat to the security of the state'.

On February 6 this year, former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti were booked under the stringent PSA. This came barely hours before their six-month-long "preventive detention" were to come to an end.

(With agency inputs)

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