Hurriyat Conference leader and Kashmir’s chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said on Friday that he was detained at his home and prevented from leading congregational prayers at Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid.
“Today, on the occasion of Jumat-ul-vida, state authorities have not allowed prayers at the Jamia Masjid for the fifth consecutive year,” he said in a video statement released by his office on social media. “I have also been detained at home.”
Farooq said that authorities in the Union Territory forcibly locked the gates of the Jamia Masjid and did not allow congregational prayers on the last Friday of the month of Ramzan.
Former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who offered the prayers at the mosque at the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar, denounced the house detention of the Mirwaiz and the locking up of the Jamia Masjid.
“In the entire country, mosques are being demolished and Muslims are hounded, beaten and forced to chant slogans of other religions,” she said.
Farooq was released from house detention in September, four years after being taken into custody in the wake of the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir.
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