Five men have been detained under the Public Safety Act in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar district. According to the district administration, the five “were hardcore criminals” with “anti-national and anti-social records”.

Those detained were identified as Mohammad Abdullah Gujjar, Noor Din, Ghulam Nabi Choppan, Mohammad Jaffer Sheikh and Mohammad Ramzan.

An official spokesperson for the district administration said that the detained persons were held under the preventive detention law because of “apprehensions” of disturbance of law and order.

Kishtwar district magistrate Rajesh Kumar Shavan had taken a strong stance against “anti-national activities”, the spokesperson added.

The Public Safety Act is a preventive detention law that allows persons to be taken into custody to prevent them from acting against “the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order” in the Union territory.

A senior police official told Scroll that the five men had past records of association with militancy.

Twenty-two other persons were also placed under surveillance for allegedly attempting to obstruct projects of national importance in the region, the district administration said.

Responding to the detention of the union leaders, Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti said that many across Jammu and Kashmir had been booked under draconian laws like the Public Safety Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act on “trivial charges” in the past five years.

In a post on social media, the former chief minister said: “This latest case of slapping PSA [Public Safety Act] on 5 people for raising their voice against the exploitation of our water resources by NHPC [National Hydroelectric Power Corporation] to fill in their own coffers is shocking because people have high expectations from the newly elected government.”

She added: “Hope they look into it immediately and see that these draconian laws are not used arbitrarily against our own citizens for raising genuine concerns.”

Activist detained under PSA in Doda

Another 25-year-old environmental activist, identified as Rehmatullah Ahmed, was also detained and booked under the Public Safety Act for allegedly challenging the district administration in Doda over civic issues, the Kashmir Times reported on Monday.

On November 9, Ahmed was booked under the Act for allegedly being an “overground worker and sympathiser of militants” who posed a “threat to the security of the state”, The Wire reported, quoting from the documents concerning his arrest.

The documents accused Rehamatullah of being “in continuous touch with ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]/PAK [Pakistan] based settled militants”.

Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported that the five men were union leaders detained for protesting hydropower projects in Chenab Valley.