Kashmiri law graduate moves SC to know about parents

A law graduate from Kashmir who could not communicate with family has moved the Supreme Court seeking information about his parents, whom he feared to be detained.

Mohammad Aleem Syed, a law graduate from Jamia Milia Islamia, doing apprenticeship with a lawyer here, in his plea said he had not received any information on his parents and brother in Kashmir since the intervening night of August 4-5.

The petitioner said there was a compete information blackout with internet and telecommunications shutdown.

Parliament on August 6 passed a resolution supporting the presidential order scrapping provisions of Article 370 making it redundant and reorganisation of the state into Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.

Syed has cited 53 instances of internet shutdown and snapping of phone lines, TV, social media and other forms of media communication this year. He submitted that the present clampdown had no legal basis and was the most draconian in the J&K's history.

He said information blackout and restriction on movement violated the fundamental right to freedom of expression and movement under Article 19 of the Constitution. He said in the absence of any concrete information he was left with only rumours of violence and killing in the Valley.

Syed said there was no ground to keep his parents and the Valley under detention and quoted UN Special Rapparteur on freedom of expression David Kaye as saying the shutdown was unprecedented.

Such a blockade violated Article 21, he said and added as the J&K High Court was physically inaccessible to him he had moved the apex court.

( With inputs from IANS )