Islamabad    -   Former minister for interior and Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior Chairman Senator A Rehman Malik has termed the arrest of senior Congress leader and important cabinet member of former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh P Chidambaram as shocking.

Former minister said the only fault of Chidambaram was that he had raised voice against Indian PM Narendra Modi’s unilateral decision to revoke Articles 370 and 35A of the constitution to strip the state of Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomous status.

The senator said the arrest was victimization of a political opponent. He said that arrest of Chidambaram was part of a plot to suppress dissent and to divert attention from the recent unrest in Kashmir.

Malik said that PM Modi had given RSS a free hand to carry out the genocide of Muslims in the Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK). Senator expressed the fear that there would be more arrests of opposition leaders in days to come so that all opposing voices could be stifled.

Former minister said that Chidambaram had visited Pakistan to attend the SAARC conference in Islamabad where he had cautioned him that India was going to have a new brigade of Hindu fanatics. “At that time, I didn’t agree but subsequently had to admit that Chidambaram was right,” Malik informed.

He said that PM Modi was not hounding Kashmiris only, but also those politicians who were opposed to his extremist ideology.  Malik called upon the international community and human rights organisations to take notice of unprecedented brutalities by the Indian forces against innocent Kashmiris.