Police and security forces in Pakistan-administered Kashmir have arrested a central leader of the banned Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), Shaukat Nawaz Mir, from the Hail Sarang area of Dhirkot, Muzaffarabad Deputy Commissioner Munir Qureshi said on Tuesday.
According to Qureshi, Mir was taken into custody alongside an associate. Mir and his associate’s present location is unclear.
A resident of Muzaffarabad, Mir is one of four central JAAC leaders for whom the government had offered head money of Rs. 10 million. Sohaib Javed and Hafeez Hamdani, two other wanted JAAC leaders, remain at-large.
The Azad Jammu and Kashmir government imposed a ban on the JAAC on June 5 under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) following violent protests seeking the abolition of 12 seats reserved for refugees from India-held Kashmir who migrated to Pakistan after 1947.
Authorities insist the demand to abolish the reserved seats risks disrupting the electoral process ahead of elections for the 53-member AJK Legislative Assembly, due on July 27. An All-Parties Conference in the region last month unanimously rejected the protesters’ demand, maintaining any constitutional reforms fall exclusively within the mandate of elected representatives and cannot be determined through extra-parliamentary means.