Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, who is presently detained under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA), was shifted to her official residence at Fairview Gupkar Road in Srinagar on Tuesday.
The government order terms her official residence as a ‘subsidiary jail’, where she will continue to remain under detention.
The PDP leader has been under detention since August 5 last year, the day the Centre had withdrawn the special status given to J-K under Article 370 of the Constitution and divided the state into two Union Territories — Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir.
Mufti was initially kept at the Hari Niwas guesthouse in Srinagar and later shifted to a tourism department hut in the Chashma Shahi area. From there she was shifted to a government quarter in the transport yard lane in Srinagar.
There is no official word on whether the decision to shift her to her official residence on the Gupkar Road is a prelude to her being set free.
In February this year, Mehbooba Mufti along with another former CM Omar Abdullah was booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) without charges, barely hours before their arrest was to come to an end.
Under PSA a person can be kept under detention without trial for up to two year.
However, on March 24, nearly after eight months in detention post the abrogation of Article 370 in August last year, Omar Abdullah was released.
The Jammu and Kashmir government revoked the Public Safety Act (PSA) of Abdullah and ended his detention.
Omar’s father and National conference chief Farooq Abdullah was released from detention on March 13. Senior Abdullah was kept at his residence in Gupkar Road in Srinagar, which was turned into a sub-jail.
Farooq Abdullah was detained under the draconian Public Safety Act since September 15, which was extended for three more months on December 13, which was revoked.
Following Omar’s release, Mehbooba Mufti had tweeted: “Glad he will be released. For all their talk of nari Shakti & women emancipation, seems like this regime fears women the most.”