Geelani, other Kashmiri separatist leaders prevented from attending Rasool's condolence meeting

Police detained the chairman of hardline faction of the All Party Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, on Thursday when he came out of his residence to attend a condolence meeting of Zahid Rasool, a truck driver killed in petrol bomb attack at Udhampur, in Batangoo Kulgam.

Apart from Geelani, other top separatist leaders were also placed under house arrest.

They were placed in custody to prevent them from holding a meeting in Anantnag to pay their condolences for Rasool, the youth who died of injuries suffered in a petrol bomb attack recently.

Moderate Hurriyat faction leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Shabir Ahmad Shah, Nayeem Khan and Zafar Akbar Bhat were the ones placed under house arrest along with Geelani, a police official said.

The chairman of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Mohammad Yasin Malik, Javaid Ahmad Mir and Shahidul Islam were taken into preventive custody and lodged in different police stations of the city.

The house arrests and preventive detentions were carried out as a precautionary measure as presence of separatists in Anantnag could have led to law and order problems.

Zahid Rasool Bhat, who succumbed to injuries at a Delhi hospital on October 18, was injured along with another person in a petrol bomb attack on their truck at Udhampur on October 9.

Nine persons have been arrested and booked for murder in connection with the case. All of the accused have also been booked under Public Safety Act.

The separatist outfits have condemned the government action saying the government was not even allowing peaceful protest against the murder of innocent Kashmiris.