india

Updated: Jun 17, 2020 08:06 IST

Shah Faesal, the IAS topper who quit the civil services to launch his political party this year, on Monday moved to the Delhi High Court challenging his detention at the Delhi airport from where he was sent back to Jammu and Kashmir.

In his petition, the civil servant-turned-politician told the high court that he was at the Delhi airport on the night intervening August 14 and 15 to travel to Harvard University, Boston to pursue his academic career. But, Shah Faesal said, he was stopped at the Delhi airport by officials and illegally “whisked” back to Kashmir.

Shah Faesal alleged that no transit remand was sought in Delhi before illegally taking him to Srinagar.

The matter was urgently mentioned before a bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar who allowed the petition to be listed after lunch.

A bench of Justice Manmohan and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal later heard Faesal’s lawyer and sought the Centre’s response. The court, at the request of the central government’s law officer, however, did not issue a formal notice. The government said it would file its reply to Faesal’s petition in two days.

The Delhi High Court will hear his petition on Friday.

It has been alleged that Shah Faesal’s detention was linked to his sharp comments against the Centre’s move to scrap special status for Jammu and Kashmir as well as split the state into two union territories to be administered by the central government in Delhi.

There has been no official word on his detention. News agency PTI has reported that Faesal was detained under Jammu and Kashmir’s public safety act and was being detained at Srinagar’s state-run Centaur hotel.

Apart from media interviews, Shah Faesal had, before his detention, tweeted that the Centre move to take away J&K’s special status had ended space for mainstream politics in the region. “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,” he had tweeted and also called for restoration of the political rights.