The new dismissals raise the number of Kashmiri Muslim employees who have been sacked to 16 since August 5, 2019. (AP)

The government of India-administered Jammu and Kashmir has sacked two academics and two officials, accusing them of involvement in “secessionist” activities.

A government statement said on Saturday activities of the sacked persons “had come to the adverse notice of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as they have been found involved in activities prejudicial to the security interests of the state”.

Their dismissal raises the number of Kashmiri Muslim employees who have been sacked to 16 since August 5, 2019, when the Hindu nationalist Indian government scrapped the autonomous status of the Muslim-majority region.

Majid Hussain Qadri, an assistant professor of management studies at Kashmir University in Srinagar, was sacked because, according to the government, “Qadri has a long association with terror organizations including Lashkar-eTaiba.”

Qadri had been jailed in June 2004 under the Public Safety Act, a controversial preventive detention law.

Muheet Ahmad Bhat, a scientist in the computer sciences department at the Entrepreneurship Development Institute, was fired for, what the statement said, “propagating secessionist-terrorist agenda in the University of Kashmir by radicalizing the students for advancing the program and agenda of Pakistan and its proxies.”

This story was originally published in trtworld.com. Read the full story here