National Conference MP Mohammad Akbar Lone.

SRINAGAR: Sitting National Conference MP Mohammad Akbar Lone 's son Hilal Lone on Monday became the seventh political functionary to be booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in J&K as the administration sought to extend his preventive detention beyond 180 days, just as it had done in the case of former CMs Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti last Thursday.

Two other political functionaries — former NC legislator Irfan Ahmad Shah and Peoples Democratic Party member Khursheed Alam — were put under house arrest after being released from Srinagar's MLA Hostel. Like Hilal, they have been in detention since the first half of August last year.

Shah and Alam, who is a former member of the legislative council, had spent the first few months of detention at the Centaur Hotel sub-jail before being shifted to the MLA Hostel at the start of winter. Jammu and Kashmir People's Movement chief Shah Faesal and five members of other parties are the last of the political detainees still lodged there.

On Thursday, the Union territory administration had invoked the PSA to extend the detention of Omar and Mehbooba by three months along with NC general secretary Ali Muhammad Sagar and senior PDP functionary Sartaj Madani. Three days later, PDP functionary and former minister Naeem Akhter was booked under the same law.

Omar’s father and former CM Farooq Abdullah has been detained under PSA since August. In the months since, several foreign governments have urged the Centre to release all political prisoners, but the Centre seems to have selectively hardened its stance on some detentions.

The first signal came last week when former minister and People's Conference chairman Sajjad Gani Lone and PDP's youth wing president Waheed Para were put under house arrest in their respective Srinagar residences within half an hour of being released from the MLA Hostel.

