Omar’s white beard photo goes viral on social media as SC defers hearing on his detention

Srinagar: A new photograph of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, who is under detention, has popped up on social media in which he can be seen with a doctor after a routine health check-up. The photograph in which he is seen sporting an overgrown grey dishevelled beard is similar to the one which had emerged a couple of months earlier, when the politician’s detention had been extended by the administration.
The photo appeared on social media barely hours after the Supreme Court postponed the hearing on a petition challenging his detention under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978. The apex court said that it would hear the matter after the Holi break. The photo has gone viral on social media.
His earlier photo too, had evoked a lot of online criticism with netizens taking to various social media platforms on what they called was ‘unlawful detention’.
The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference leader was booked under the stringent Public Safety Act on February 5, along with other top leaders of the erstwhile state.
Calling Abdullah “a vocal critic” of the scrapping of Article 370, the J&K administration had claimed that his acts had the potential to disturb public order and could be seen as “calculated to disturb public peace and tranquility”.
Challenging the stringent law under which he had been booked, his sister, Sara Abdullah Pilot approached the Supreme Court last month and mentioned in her petition that the order of detention was manifestly illegal and there was no question of him being a “threat to the maintenance of public order”.
Senior Congress leader and veteran advocate Kapil Sibal is appearing for Sara Abdullah Pilot.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court said that it will hear the petition challenging the detention of Omar Abdullah under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978, after the Holi break.
The matter was listed before a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra but could not be taken up on Thursday.
Sibal has requested the court to take up the matter as soon as possible, when the apex court reopens after Holi since it is a habeas corpus case.