As police raids continued at bookshops with ‘Jamaat-affiliated ideology’, the Valley's chief priest Mirwaiz Umar Farooq condemned the action as “absurd to say the least”. “Cracking down on Islamic literature and seizing them from bookstores while condemnable is ridiculous,” Umar Farooq, the 14th Mirwaiz of Kashmir who also heads the separatist Hurriyat Conference, said in his first reaction after the raids. This comes a day after Kashmiri leaders such as National Conference’s Srinagar MP Aga Ruhullah Mehdi and People’s Democratic Party leader Iltija Mufti condemned the raids. The Mirwaiz continued: "Policing thought by seizing books is absurd to say the least, in the time of access to all information on virtual highways". The police raids on books “promoting the ideology of a banned organisation” began Friday evening, with the action continuing in north Kashmir's Kupwara Saturday. "In a well-coordinated and legally supervised operation, police in Handwara conducted stringent checks across various bookshops in Police District (PD) Handwara to prevent the circulation of banned literature linked to Jamaat-e-Islami,” police said in an official release Saturday. “The checking was conducted as per the provisions of the law, with special emphasis on sensitive areas such as Kralgund, Villgam, Qalamabad, Handwara town”. Multiple copies of "banned books" were recovered and seized, the statement went on to say. While the Ministry of Home (MHA) outlawed the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu Kashmir in 2019, literature linked to the Jamaat and sold in the Valley is mostly published by the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. “These books were found to be in violation of legal regulations, and strict action is being taken against those found in possession of such material," police said. "The operation was aimed at curbing the spread of unlawful content that could disturb public order".
