By Jehangir Ali
Srinagar: A political worker of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Doda district has been booked under the controversial Public Safety Act (PSA), with the party’s Jammu and Kashmir chief alleging that the detention was ordered at the behest of a senior BJP leader.
The order for the detention of Mohd Rafi alias Pinka, a resident of Phagsoo in Doda district in Jammu, was issued under section 8 of the PSA by Harvinder Singh, district magistrate (DM) of Doda and a 2019-batch IAS officer, on Thursday (April 10).
Section 8 of the PSA empowers Jammu and Kashmir’s DMs to detain any individual against whom a police dossier has been brought “with a view to preventing [them] from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order”.
Rafi, a prominent social and political activist who runs a small shop in Phagsoo, has contested sarpanch and district development council elections from Doda in the past.
In December 2021, he had reportedly flagged alleged irregularities in the Integrated Watershed Management Programme in Doda to Jammu and Kashmir’s anti-corruption bureau and the lieutenant governor’s grievance cell.
Later, he alleged that his forged signature was used to withdraw the complaint in order to “suppress the matter and shield the culprits”.
The PSA dossier submitted to the Doda DM’s office on March 29 describes Rafi as an “OGW (Category-A)” – OGW stands for overground worker of militants – who has the “ability” to trigger “serious law and order problem” and “public disorder” in the district “with his inflammatory and highly objectionable speeches”.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
