Kashmiri bureaucrat-turned-politician Shah Faesal on Thursday withdrew his plea against his detention filed in the Delhi High Court, saying that several residents of his state had been unlawfully detained since August but had no legal assistance, PTI reported.

Faesal’s wife said in an affidavit that he had told her to withdraw the petition when she met him on September 10 for half an hour in the lobby of the detention centre in which he was staying.

Faesal’s wife said in her affidavit: “The petitioner communicated to me that in consideration of the fact that hundreds of other residents of the state of Jammu and Kashmir have been unlawfully detained in the intervening weeks and have not been released as of yet, being aware of the fact that many or most of the these detenus have no legal counsel or other remedies, he no longer wishes to pursue the present petition as a legal remedy against his unlawful detention.”

On August 14, Faesal was detained at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and sent back to Kashmir, where he was held again at a makeshift detention centre at a hotel in Srinagar. Faesal was detained under the Public Safety Act. On August 19, he moved the Delhi High Court saying he was detained when he was about to board a flight from the Delhi airport to go to Harvard University in the United States. Faesal had alleged that officials did not get a transit remand before they had illegally taken him back to Srinagar.

Before he was detained, Faesal had been vocal against the Centre’s move to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under Article 370 of the Constitution and had been expressing his dissent on social media.

Following the Centre’s August 5 order, prohibitory orders were imposed in the state and communication networks were snapped. While according to authorities the lockdown has been removed to a large extent, they remain in place in several parts of the Kashmir Valley. Several other mainstream political leaders in the state, such as former chief ministers Mehbooba Mufti, Omar Abdullah and Farooq Abdullah, were taken into custody or put under house arrest after the clampdown last month.

On Wednesday, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court allowed two National Conference MPs to meet the party’s top leadership, Omar and Farooq Abdullah, The Indian Express reported. But the court told them to not speak to the media about the meeting. While Farooq Abdullah is under house arrest in Srinagar, Omar Abdullah has been detained in Jammu.

The court of Justice Sanjeev Kumar asked the Srinagar deputy commissioner to facilitate the meeting between the Abdullahs and party MPs retired Justice Hasnain Masoodi and Akbar Lone.

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