Civil servant turned politician Shah Faesal under house arrest

Srinagar, Aug 14: Civil servant turned politician Shah Faesal was arrested, while he was trying to leave the country.

Sources say that he was arrested at Delhi while trying to leave the countey. He has been placed under house arrest.

Faesal, who has been in the limelight since becoming the first Kashmiri to top the exam in 2009, resigned protesting the "unabated" killings in Kashmir and the marginalisation of Indian Muslims.

In a brief statement on Facebook, the 35-year-old said his resignation was also to protest "the marginalisation and invisiblisation of around 200 million Indian Muslims at the hands of Hindutva forces reducing them to second-class citizens; insidious attacks on the special identity of the state and growing culture of intolerance and hate in mainland India in the name of hyper-nationalism"

Faesal, who returned from a foreign training and was awaiting posting, said he had decided to resign from Indian Administrative Service, "to protest against the unabated killings in Kashmir, and lack of any sincere reach out from the Union government"

Without naming it, Faesal launched a scathing attack on the BJP-led government at the Centre, saying the "subversion of public institutions like the RBI, the CBI and the NIA has the potential to decimate the constitutional edifice of this country and it needs to be stopped"

"I wish to reiterate that voices of reason in this country cannot be muzzled for long and the environment of siege will need to end if we wish to usher in true democracy," he added.