SRINAGAR: The Jammu & Kashmir government on Saturday booked former IAS officer of J&K, Shah Faesal , under the Public Safety Act (PSA).

This comes as the six months’ detention of Faesal under Section 147 CrPC ended on Friday. The district magistrate of Srinagar issued the PSA dossier against the former bureaucrat on Friday evening, sources said.

Shah Faesal, a doctor by profession, shot into prominence after he topped the UPSC civil services examination in 2009. The then J&K government projected Faesal as an icon for Kashmiri youth to attract them to join top government jobs rather than take to militancy.

Faesal served in various posts in J&K including that of district magistrate of Bandipora, director of school education, and managing director of J&K State Power Development Corporation (JKSPDC).

Terrorists shot down Faesal’s father, Ghulam Rasool Shah, when Faesal was 19 years old. The family had to then shift to Srinagar from Lolab in Kupwara district of north Kashmir.

Shah Faesal did his MBBS from the SKIMS Medical College & Hospital in Srinagar. The former IAS officer has a master’s in Urdu and, in 2018, he was a recipient of Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School.

Shah Faesal formally quit the IAS on January 9, 2019, citing civil rights issues and “unabated killings in Kashmir and absence of credible political initiative”, and started his own political party, Jammu & Kashmir People’s Movement (JKPM).

The government detained Faesal on August 14 last year at the IGI airport, just before he was to fly abroad, and took him back to Srinagar where he was booked under Section 147 of the CrPC.

The UT administration of J&K has already booked seven politicians including three former chief ministers — Farooq Abdullah (president of National Conference), Omar Abdullah (vice-president of National Conference), and Mehbooba Mufti (president of Peoples Democratic Party)— under the PSA.

Farooq, a sitting MP from Srinagar constituency, was detained a few days after the revocation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019. On September 16, he became the first politician to be booked under the PSA. The other two former CMs were booked under PSA on February 6 this year, barely a few hours before their preventive detention was to end.

The other politicians to be booked under PSA are: Naeem Akhtar (PDP), Sartaj Madni (PDP), Ali Mohammad Sagar (NC), and Hilal Lone, son Akbar Lone (MP from NC).

