Former IAS officer and head of the Jammu & Kashmir People’s Movement (JKPM) party Shah Faesal has been booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA). 

He is now one of the eight political leaders after Dr. Farooq Abdulla to have been booked under the draconian law. Others who have been booked under PSA include Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Ali Mohammad Sagar, Sartaj Madani, Hilal Lone, and Nayeem Akhtar.

Faesal has been under detention since August last year. He was arrested on August 14, 2019, under Section 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (breach of the peace or disturbance to public tranquillity), from the Delhi airport. He was sent to Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370.

Faesal was, at first, detained at the makeshift sub-jail at SKICC and was later shifted to the MLA hostel.

However, it is not yet clear whether he will be shifted to his home or will continue to be kept in the MLA hostel sub-jail.

The former IAS officer, who had first grabbed headlines by topping the UPSC examination, had long been critical of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA government's move to abrogate Article 370 and bifurcate Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories. Taking to Twitter, Faesal had said that there were two choices before the Kashmiris – to be a stooge or to be a separatist.

"Kashmir will need a long, sustained, non-violent political mass movement for restoration of the political rights. Abolition of Article 370 has finished the mainstream. Constitutionalists are gone. So you can either be a stooge or a separatist now. No shades of grey," his tweet had read.