Yasin Malik’s Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front banned

New Delhi: The Centre on Friday banned Hurriyat leader Yasin Malik’s Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), officials familiar with the development confirmed.

The decision was taken by the Cabinet Committee on Security, highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy of curbing terror and groups instigating terror in the Kashmir valley.

The move comes nearly a month after a major crackdown on separatists in the valley in which 130 separatists from the Jamaat-e-Islami (Kashmir) and the Hurriyat Conference were arrested, including JKLF Chief Yasin Malik and Jamaat-e-Islami chief Abdul Hamid Fayaz.

Earlier this month, the Union home ministry also banned the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir for a period of five years on grounds of the outfit being in “close touch” with militant outfits.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday also cracked down on separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Yasin Malik. The agency imposed a penalty of ₹14.40 lakh on the separatists for illegally possessing foreign exchange amounting to $10,000.

More than a month after a suicide blast by the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in Kashmir’s Pulwama district, the special cell of the Delhi police also arrested JeM operative Sajjad Khan from the capital’s Red Fort area late on Thursday night.

The Pulwama attack took place on 14 February with JeM operative Adil Ahmad Dar ramming an explosives-packed SUV into a CRPF convoy along the Jammu-Srinagar highway in Pulwama’s Lethpora.