Anantnag: Jammu Kashmir People's Democratic Party chief and former J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday said the country was 'not the same as before', adding that PDP-founder and her father Mufti Mohd Sayeed would be 'heartbroken' if he saw the condition of India at present. Speaking at an event commemorating the seventh death anniversary of the latter, Mehbooba also said that Kashmir, as well as India, was facing a downturn.
"If the situation in Kashmir has truly improved, send back the armed forces in a phased manner. Instead, you (Centre) are providing the local population with weapons. The entire Kashmir has been turned into a military barrack. This is not the India that Mufti Saab used to refer to, time and again. He would be heartbroken if he were here today," she said.
Also read: J&K: Several suspects detained in Rajouri civilian killings case
"This is Godse's India, we did not join hands with this. We had joined the India which belonged to the likes of Gandhi, Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad", Mufti stated. Further drawing a comparison between courts of the past and present, she also brought to attention CJI DY Chandrachud's observation regarding lower court judges being apprehensive about providing bail in heinous cases.
"In Indira Gandhi's time, the court had given verdict against her. Meanwhile, the current Chief Justice of India says judges in lower courts are afraid to grant bail to the innocent," she noted, in an apparent reference to the Allahabad High Court's disqualification, in 1976, of the-then sitting Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from contesting elections on grounds of electoral malpractice. This was followed shortly by the declaration of Emergency.
CJI DY Chandrachud in November, 2022 noted that judges in India's lower courts were wary of granting bail in heinous cases due to the fear of being targeted for the same. He observed at the time that this was also the reason why the higher judiciary was 'flooded with bail applications'.
