Srinagar, January 07, 2020 (PPI-OT): One of the most prominent lawyers and president of High Court Bar Association of occupied Kashmir, Mian Abdul Qayoom is battling multiple ailments inside Agra jail in Uttar Pradesh, India, without proper medical care, his family said. 70-year-old Qayoom was arrested from his residence in Srinagar on the intervening night of August 4 and 5, ahead of the Indian government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 and subsequent bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories.
Apart from Qayoom, senior lawyers Nazir Ahmad Ronga, Abdul Salam Rather and Mohammad Ashraf Butt, the Bar general secretary was also detained by the authorities. After his detention, he was shifted from Srinagar’s central jail to Agra jail where his condition, according to his family, aggravated due to multiple ailments in absence of proper medical care.
Despite directions from the Srinagar High Court to provide adequate medical care to Qayoom, his family says, he continues to suffer inside Agra jail. The court has listed plea challenging his detention under black law Public Safety Act (PSA) on January 30. Qayoom, the only male member in his family, has two married daughters and his wife, who lives alone at his Srinagar residence.
Mian Muzaffar, his nephew, told media men that they are very concerned about his health. “It looks like he is slipping from our hands. He is surviving on just one kidney as his other kidney has been removed earlier,” Muzaffar says.
He became the president of the bar association for the 20th term after he was elected unopposed in October 2018. Since his detention in August, Qayoom has developed alarming levels of Creatinine and has lost about 20 kg of weight due to the sickness. Suffering from hypertension, Qayoom has to take more than a dozen pills everyday, for diabetes, hypertension, prostate malfunction and nine of them particularly to avoid dialysis inside jail. His condition, Muzaffar says, has also deeply affected his wife, who is also a diabetic. What has also aggravated the condition of Qayoom is because he could not undergo a uroflowmetry test since his arrest. “It is scheduled after every two months,” his family says.
For more information, contact:
Kashmir Media Service
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