Srinagar, Dec. 11 -- Jammu and Kashmir Police have arrested two separatist leaders, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) former commander Javed Mir and Islamic Students League chief Shakeel Bakshi, in a 29-year-old case of rioting and Arms Act. Officials said that Bakshi and Mir were taken into custody after being presented in a Srinagar court on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, as part of an ongoing effort to investigate and bring closure to long-pending cases that date back to the height of militancy in the 1990s. Bakshi and Mir, both associated with separatist politics for years, were arrested in connection with a case registered at Shergari police station in Srinagar in 1996. "The case under FIR number 192/1996, was registered under Sections 341, 148, 336, 332 of the RPC, along with 7/27 Arms Act and Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, after violence erupted during a funeral procession on July 17, 1996," an official said. The case pertains to a procession at Naaz Crossing where a mob carried the body of slain militant Hilal Ahmad Beigh and turned violent when police attempted to stop it. The procession was led by separatist leaders, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Abdul Gani Lone, and Mohammad Yaqoob Wakil, Shabir Shah, Nayeem Khan, Mir and Bakshi. Geelani, Lone, and Wakil have since passed away, while Shabir Shah and Nayeem Khan are lodged in Tihar Jail in separate cases, including terror funding. "The arrests have been made to conclude and present a chargesheet in long-pending cases," the official said. Javed Mir, also called Javed Nalka, was among the first youth to take to violence as militancy erupted in Jammu and Kashmir in 1989. He became part of the prominent HAJY (Hameed, Ashfaq, Javaid and Yasin) militant group of the JKLF. While Hameed and Ashfaq were killed in encounters in the 1990s, Javed and Malik shunned violence in early 1990s and resorted to separatist politics. Malik has been awarded life term by a trial court in a terror funding case in 2022, while in March 2020, a TADA court in Jammu framed charges against him and six others allegedly involved in the killing of four unarmed Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel in 1990. Mir was arrested in the IAF case in 2019 but was subsequently granted bail....