Srinagar: Police on Thursday thwarted a protest march of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) against the detention of its Doda MLA Mehraj Malik by not allowing the party members, including Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, to move out of the Circuit House here.
Singh, along with other AAP members arrived in Srinagar on Wednesday and was scheduled to address a press conference and hold a sit-in protest at the Press Enclave here.
The AAP members were staying at the Circuit House in Sonwar area of the city.
However, a posse of police was deployed outside the Circuit House and its gates were closed.
When Singh and other members of the party tried to move out of the Circuit House, the police did not allow them.
In a video message, Singh described the police action as “dictatorship”.
“Raising our voice in a democracy is our constitutional and democratic right. Today, we were holding a protest against the arrest of Mehraj Malik and there was a press conference also. But, the height of dictatorship is that there is a huge deployment of police and we are not being allowed to move outside,” the Rajya Sabha MP said.
He said the police were not “even ready to tell us the reason for stopping us”.
“This is dictatorship as the administration is not even ready to tell us the reasons,” he added.
Referring to the party’s scheduled press conference and the protest programme, the AAP leader asked whether protesting or holding a press conference was a crime in a democracy?
“Is it a crime in a democracy to raise voice against illegal arrest? The height of dictatorship is that they are not ready to tell even a Rajya Sabha member the reason for stopping us,” he added.
Malik, who won the Doda seat in the 2024 assembly elections by over 4,500 votes, was detained on Monday under the PSA for allegedly disturbing public order, officials said. He was subsequently lodged in the Kathua district jail.
This is the first time a sitting MLA in Jammu and Kashmir has been taken into custody under the stringent law, which allows detention without charge or trial for up to two years in some cases.
