By IRNA,
Srinagar, India : Shabbir Ahmad Shah, top leader of Hurriyat Conference, who was set free Tuesday after a detention of nearly seven months, was rearrested by the police soon afterwards and whisked off to frontier town of Uri.
Though the police has claimed that Shah was arrested on August 22 in connection with the killing of senior Hurriyat leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, the state government revoked the charges against him on Monday, but took him into custody again when he stepped out of the central jail this morning.
He was rearrested by a large posse of policemen in the presence of hundreds of supporters who had come to receive him outside the jail.
Reports said that Shah’s supporters tried to resist his re-arrest but the police forced him into a vehicle and whisked him off to Uri.
Shah has spent nearly seven months in custody this time around after being arrested during the shrine board agitation days after senior Hurriyat leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, was slain near Uri in police firing while leading the Muzaffarabad march along with him.
Shah was lodged in the Central Jail in Srinagar under infamous Public Safety Act charges, but transitorily released on December 13 on court orders.
He was re-arrested minutes later with the police saying that he was being held in connection with the killing of Sheikh Aziz.
Hurriyat has ridiculed police claim and termed it as an attempt to deflect criticism it faces on the killings.
Maulana Abdullah Tari a spokesman for Shah said that his leader was a symbol of freedom who had been designated as a prisoner of conscience for his 23 years in jail for the movement.
“The courts had released Shah and quashed the PSA cases against him, but his detention despite the court orders is nothing but political vendetta,” he said.
“It seems that the government is not in favour of releasing Shah before the end of Lok Sabha elections, and that is why his detention is being justified under various pretexts,” he said.