Separatist Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (TeH) chairman Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai was arrested and booked under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) in Kashmir on Sunday.
Mr. Sehrai, 76, is the second senior Hurriyat leader after Syed Ali Geelani, who resigned from the amalgam recently. He was arrested from his residence in Srinagar’s Barzulla Baghat around 6 a.m. “A police party from the Saddar Police Station took him along in the morning,” a family member said.
Vijay Kumar, IGP, Kashmir, said Mr. Sherai has been booked under the PSA. The Act may allow the authorities to jail a person up to two years.
According to the family, Mr. Sehrai has been under house arrest since August 5, 2019, when the Centre ended J&K’s special status.
Son killed in encounter
His son Junaid Sehrai, who was a ‘commander’ of the Hizbul Mujahideen, was killed in May this year in an encounter in Srinagar.
Mr. Sehrai, close to Syed Geelani, was likely to play a significant role in the Hurriyat Conference, which is battling a leadership crisis.
The arrest comes as the J&K police have stepped up its clampdown on the leadership of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) leaders too. A JeI member, on the condition of anonymity, said, “Senior JeI leaders including Mushtaq Ahmad, Faheem Ramzan and Farooq Khaki have been arrested recently.”
