Supreme Court seeks J&K Admin’s response to Iltija Mufti’s plea challenging her mothers detention

Says, the detention cannot be forever

Srinagar: The Supreme Court Tuesday asked the Jammu and Kashmir administration to respond to Iltija Mufti’s fresh plea challenging the detention of her mother and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and said that the detention cannot be forever.

Mehbooba, the PDP chief and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, was arrested on the eve of the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and its bifurcation into Union Territories on August 5 last year The Indian Express reported.

The apex court also said that Mufti should approach authorities to attend party meetings in the Valley. A bench of justices S K Kaul and Hrishikesh Roy permitted Iltija and her uncle to meet their mother in detention.

Reacting to the top court’s order, Iltija, who is handling the Twitter account of the PDP chief, said her mother’s habeas is being dragged on endlessly and that she will continue to fight for her release.

“Not surprised that Ms Mufti’s habeas is being dragged on endlessly. A serious matter like illegal abrogation of Article 370 has been pending for over a year so one cant help but feel despondent. Nevertheless, I’ll continue fighting for her release. Meanwhile, parties associated with the Gupkar Declaration should deliberate on the next step moving forward. Perhaps one can see how people of Leh united & mobilised themselves instead of depending on courts,” She tweeted.

Iltija further said, “The result is obvious. A Leh delegation was immediately invited by the Home Minister who promised to fulfil their demands. Make no mistake, the fight for our special status and dignity has to be a political one.”

In her application before the Supreme Court, Iltija had said it has been filed praying for permission to amend the writ petition seeking inter alia a writ of habeas corpus. “The amendment sought is to include grounds of challenge and additional prayers for challenging the orders of confirmation (dated February 26) and subsequent extensions (May 5 and July 31) of the detention order (of Mehbooba) impugned in the writ petition,” the application read.

The writ petition had challenged Mehbooba’s detention on several grounds. It contends that the grounds and the dossier for detention are “stale, vague and that they suffer from non-application of mind, malice in law and that they violate the provisions of Section 8(3)(b) of the PSA”.

“The detention order based on stale grounds have become staler even more since the petition was filed and the respondent administration has continued to act with total non-application of mind and the malice in law has only been reinforced and aggravated in confirming and extending the order of detention for further periods,” it said.