Istanbul bound Shah Faesal would have drummed up support to foment trouble in Valley

New Delhi, Aug 15: The detention of Shah Faesal, civil servant turned politicians was based on concrete reports that he was trying to go abroad and dish up support to foment trouble in the Valley.

Faesal who has been in New Delhi since the decision to abrogate Article 370 was taken was prevented from boarding a flight from Delhi to Istanbul. He was then taken to Srinagar and held under the Public Safety Act (PSA). He has been placed under house arrest.

Sources tell, OneIndia that the move to prevent him from flying out the country was absolutely necessary. We have concrete reports that several politicians from the Valley may go abroad in a bid to try and foment trouble in the Valley.

As a precautionary measure, the administration had also placed under house arrest, former chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah. It may be recalled that former MLA, Rashid Engineer has been arrested by the National Investigation Agency in connection with the terror funding case, in which Lashkar-e-Tayiba chief Hafiz Saeed is the main accused.

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.