NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR, 26 March — Indian police yesterday arrested top Kashmir separatist leader Yasin Malik, triggering angry protests and running clashes between his supporters and security forces.
Malik, 35, heads the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and is also an executive member of Kashmir’s main separatist alliance, the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference.
Around 20 policemen forced their way into a press conference Malik was holding in Srinagar and dragged him away after he initially resisted arrest.
“The press can wait, we cannot,” shouted police superintendent Tanveer Geelani as scuffles broke out with Malik’s supporters throwing stones at the police vehicles and shouting pro-independence slogans. The police fired several tear-gas shells as they sought to clear a way out of the area.
Geelani said the arrest was related to the seizure on Sunday of $100,000 from two separatist activists who police said had confessed to bringing the money illegally into Kashmir for Malik. But Malik has denied any link to the seized cash. However, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah asserted that the government had “irrefutable” evidence against Malik.
Malik was then booked under the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO), which opposition parties in New Delhi have criticized as draconian and potentially anti-Muslim. Malik’s arrest sparked protests near his Srinagar residence, with his supporters setting up barricades of burning tires in the streets and pelting police units with stones and bricks. Shops and other businesses swiftly pulled down their shutters as tensions rose. Branding Malik’s arrest an act of “naked Indian terrorism”, a Hurriyat statement said it had exposed India’s claims to the title of the world’s largest free democracy.
“The genuine political leadership of Kashmir is being arrested on meaningless pretexts ... with the purpose of hoodwinking the international community,” the statement said. Prior to his arrest, Malik had said that the Indian authorities were trying to use the cash seizure as an excuse to malign his character and undermine Kashmir’s separatist leadership, which has vowed to boycott regional assembly elections slated for September.
“The government is looking for reasons for our arrest. But I was not expecting they would resort to such a cheap way,” Malik said.
“This is part of a media war launched against us because of our stand on the elections,” he added.
A police spokesman said the $100,000 in cash had been seized following the arrest of two people overnight Sunday in Kud, 200 km south of Srinagar. The spokesman said the two suspects, Mustaq Dar and Shazia Begum, had told police under interrogation that they had been given the money for Malik by a JKLF official in Katmandu.
Dar had once served as the JKLF’s chief spokesman, while Malik was among the first group of young activists who took up arms against Indian rule in 1989. The two were also booked under the POTO.
Police counter-insurgency units raided Malik’s house as well as the JKLF headquarters in Srinagar shortly after the arrest, seizing documents as well as the separatist leader’s passport. A JKLF statement said the police had ransacked both locations, and called for a one-day strike on Wednesday to protest Malik’s detention.
Meanwhile, an activist commander was among eight people killed in separate overnight clashes in Kashmir, police said yesterday.
Eight participants of a Shiite procession were also seriously injured in a grenade attack by activists yesterday in the town of Surankote, police said, adding the intended target was a local security headquarters.
“The grenade missed the target and exploded among the marchers,” a police spokesman in Srinagar said, adding two women and two children were among those injured. A joint team of police and paramilitary troops on Sunday gunned down Lateef Ahmad, a commander of the Hizbul Mujahedeen group on the outskirts of Srinagar.
Another Hizb activist was killed and three troopers injured in fighting yesterday, the spokesman said. Troops overnight shot dead three more activists elsewhere, while alleged activists killed three civilians.
