India arrests Kashmir leader Abdullah under controversial law

A senior pro-India Kashmir politician was arrested under a controversial law that allows authorities to imprison someone for up to two years without charge or trial. Farooq Abdullah, 82, a three-time chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, was on Monday arrested under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in Srinagar, the capital of the disputed Himalayan region. Abdullah has been under house arrest since August 5 when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government stripped Kashmir of its special status and imposed a security lockdown.

“We have arrested him, and a committee will decide how long the arrest will be,” said Muneer Khan, a top police official in Indian-administered Kashmir. Rights activists say more than 20,000 Kashmiris have been detained under the PSA since it came into effect in 1978. It has been widely used against rebels after an armed rebellion erupted against Indian rule in the region in 1989.

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