In what comes as a relief to the beleaguered family of Mohammed Yousuf Sheikh and his wife Haneefa Begum, the Jammu and Kashmir high court has ordered that 80-year-old Sheikh’s detention under the Public Safety Act be quashed. The court has for the third time directed the jail authorities to release him.
Incidentally, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti visited Baramulla in North Kashmir as part of her programme to reach out to the people and meet public delegations across the state. According to various media reports, when she visited Sopore to inaugurate the zonal office of J&K Bank, a member of one of the delegations raised the issue of Sheikh with her, but no response came.
Reports said that during CM Mufti’s Baramulla outreach, one of the persons told her that the 73-year-old Sheikh Haneefa Begum has been going through a lot of agony to get her husband released. Haneefa lost her son Rouf Ahmed Sheikh, who was a PHD scholar at Aligarh Muslim University, in 2000. Her other son Altaf Ahmad Sheikh, who was an employee in the state’s health department, was killed by unidentified gunmen in 2015. The family blamed the counter insurgents for his killing.
While talking to The Sunday Guardian, Haneefa Begum’s advocate Shafaqat Nazir said that the FIRs filed by the police against the ailing Sheikh were baseless and the court has asked the authorities to release him. He said that the court has observed that it was illegal to book him on the same ground on which he was booked earlier. The government has been slapping PSAs on him on the same grounds that were earlier framed against him.
The J&K High Court bench of Justice M.K. Hanjoora has quashed the third PSA slapped on him on 17 April 2017. His advocate said that it seems that the authorities were looking to slap a fourth PSA on the aged person.