Thaindian News

Srinagar, Aug 11 (IANS) Jammu and Kashmir police that had Thursday restricted the movement of several separatist leaders took into custody Democratic Freedom Party’s Shabir Shah while permitting Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umer Farooq to attend a seminar.

Shah was arrested Thursday as he tried to breach prohibitory orders and came out of his house in Srinagar along with two dozen supporters to stage a protest march.

“He has been taken into preventive custody and is now lodged at Saddar police station in the city,” police sources said here.

Shah, the Mirwaiz as well as Syed Ali Geelani and Muhammad Nayeem Khan were placed under house arrest in the morning to scuttle an assembly in the Eidgah grounds to observe the death anniversary of senior separatist leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz, killed in a firing incident this day in 2008 in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.

However, the Mirwaiz was allowed to reach his house to attend a seminar at the Hurriyat headquarters in Rajbagh area, police sources said.

The seminar was to commemorate the death anniversary of Aziz.

Aziz and some other separatist leaders were leading a march Aug 11, 2008 to breach the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between the two parts of Kashmir.

As crowds pushed barricades to cross the LoC, Aziz was killed in a mysterious firing incident, the perpetrators of which are yet to be brought to justice though the separatists blame the security forces for it.

The moderate and hardline groups of the Hurriyat Conference, however, made it clear Thursday through separate statements that there would be no shutdown and people should go about their routine business.

Police and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) have been deployed in strength in Srinagar city to prevent any untoward incident.

Businesses and government offices functioned as usual and transport plied normally in all the major cities and towns of the valley and people thronged markets to buy the essentials of life.