ISLAMABAD, (MILLAT ONLINE/APP): The puppet authorities have slapped
black law, Public Safety Act (PSA), for the 3rd time on a
prominent Hurriyet leader and member of Jamaat-e-Islami, 76-year-
old Sheikh Mohammad Yousuf.
Sheikh Mohammad Yousuf, who was arrested during the mass
uprising last year on August 8, was granted bail twice in all the
cases filed against him by Sopore Police, first in November and
then in March this year, Kashmir Media Service reported.
A resident of Iqbal Nagar in Sopore town, the JI leader has
been imprisoned in different jails since then. Last week, he was
sent to Baramulla sub-jail from Sopore police station, where he
had been kept after the court granted him bail in March, after he
was booked for the third time under draconian PSA.
Sheikh Mohammad Yousuf’s only two sons are no longer alive.
Mohammad Altaf Sheikh was killed at New Colony Sopore in the 2015
by Indian-army backed gunmen and another son Abdul Rauf, a PhD
scholar, was killed by Indian troops during a crackdown on
Srinagar-Jammu highway in Srinagar in 2001 when he was travelling
in a bus.
Sheikh Yousuf’s wife Hanifa Begum, a prominent lady of
Sopore, his daughter-in-law and her three children are the family
members at home.
“For the past nine months, our life has been limited to
courts, but despite getting bail orders in November and then again
in March, my husband was kept at the police station for a month
without any orders of remand,” said Hanifa Begum, wife of Sheikh
Yousuf. “We had a hope that they will release him but they instead
slapped him with PSA third time. This is the extreme level of
cruelty.”
Sheikh Yousuf has been a pro-freedom activist and a member
of Jamaat-e-Islami since his youth. Hanifa Begum said after both
her sons were killed, she has only one hope to live for, that is
Yousuf, but she fears his continuous detention under Public Safety
Act may damage his health as he is a heart patient and has
undergone three surgeries in his eye.
The police dossier on Yousuf shows that he has been released
twice in the past nine months, first on November 24, 2016 and the
second time on March 4, 2017. This, according to his family, is a
lie. He has not been released even for a single day in the past
nine months, the family says.