You can imprison a person but not his ideas: Mehbooba Mufti

5 Dariya News

Srinagar 23-Feb-2019

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti said that you can imprison a person but not his ideas, referring to the arrest of Jama’at-e-Islami (JeI) leaders and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik.Mehbooba, while slamming government’s move, termed the arrest spree as an arbitrary move. Her comment came after the arrest of several JeI leaders and separatist Malik during night raids, just ahead of the hearing on Article 35A in the Supreme Court.She took to Twitter and said that she fail to understand why Hurriyat leaders and workers of JeI were arrested in the past 24 hours. Raising questions over the arrest of leaders, Mehbooba said that such move will only precipitate a situation in Jammu and Kashmir. She also questioned the legality of the arrests.In the past 24 hours, Hurriyat leaders & workers of Jamaat organisation have been arrested. Fail to understand such an arbitrary move which will only precipitate matters in J&K. Under what legal grounds are their arrests justified? You can imprison a person but not his ideas.Former minister and BJP ally Sajjad Gani Lone of the People’s Conference compared the arrest spree with the situation in the 1990s. He said that large scale arrests took place in 1990, when leaders were ferried to Jodhpur and many other jails across the country. Cautioning the government, he said that this is a tested and failed model, Please desist from it.(PTK)