Kashmir ‘rage boy’ missing after re-arrest
The family members of a Kashmir youth– dubbed as ‘Rage Boy’ particularly by the Western media– is unaware about his whereabouts after he was rearrested by the local police earlier this month.
Shakeel Ahmed Bhat has been intermittently in jail for past six years. He was arrested in 2008 on charges of organizing protests against police and authorities had slapped the controversial Public Safety Act on him 18 times after court quashed 17 such orders.
He was released before Indian Parliament elections but was arrested shortly before the start of Assembly polls.His family in Kashmir’s Old City says he was released by court from Udhampur jail in Jammu on January 8, however, he was soon rearrested by police and taken to some unknown destination.
“Since January 8, we are not in touch with our son and we don’t know where he has been imprisoned. We appeal to authorities to inform us about the location where the police have kept him,” the family members said.
Meanwhile while, castigating authorities for not honouring the court orders and even not disclosing Shakeel’s location to his family, Democratic Political Movement general secretary, Muhammad Shafi Reshi said: authorities are trampling all the tenants of Indian democracy.
Shakeel, who came to be known as ‘Rage Boy’ of Kashmir after a foreign news outlet carried a story on him, was seen at the forefront of most of the protests in Srinagar during the Amarnath Land row agitation in 2008 and the summer agitation of 2010.
