Srinagar, December 25, 2018 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, the family members of many Hurriyat leaders and activists illegally detained under draconian law, Public Safety Act (PSA) are going through a hell since the shifting of the detainees to jails in India last month.
Those shifted from jails in Jammu to Indian jails included Hurriyat leaders, Bashir Qureshi, Ghulam Muhammad Khan Sopori, Mushtaq-ul-Islam, Farooq Ahmed Towheedi and Naseer Ahmed. The shifting took place after the Governor’s administration removed a clause from the PSA which forbade shifting of prisoners to jails outside the territory.
The wife of Bashir Qureshi, Fauzia Bashir talking to a Srinagar-based English daily Kashmir Reader said only she knows what she is going through. “From attending court hearings to doing household chores, it is not easy. I have to manage my two daughters, one is 2 years old and another is six months old. Sometimes I have to request neighbours to take care of them,” she said.
Fozia said that she could not even think of travelling to Karnal in Haryana where her husband is imprisoned. “I cannot afford it. My father pays the rent for my rented room and when he comes from Sopore to meet me here in Srinagar, he brings some food items. No one is helping and even the judicial system has become hopeless,” she said.
“For the last five months, the PSA invoked against my husband has not been quashed. Sometimes the case is not heard in court, sometimes there is a strike. It is very hard for people like us, who come to courts for relief and justice but get nothing. I have not seen my husband for five months. I don’t know in what condition he is. I pray that he is released soon, as my elder daughter cannot live without her father. Every time she calls for him saying Abu, Abu. It becomes hard for me to console her,” she added.
Naserer Ahmed’s spouse Rafiqa said that she had been going through hell since her husband was jailed in May this year. “It is hard to manage. Sometimes I don’t have money to buy medicine. How will I go to meet my husband who has been shifted to a Haryana jail? Wasn’t it enough for the authorities to punish the detainees by lodging them in jails of Jammu?” she asked.
Families of some detainees are not even aware where their loved ones are imprisoned. One such case is of 75-year-old Ghulam Muhammad Khan Sopori who was slapped with a 4th PSA detention order some weeks ago. Feroz Ahmed, son of Khan Sopori, told Kashmir Reader that the police had not disclosed where his father was imprisoned. “My father is suffering from many ailments which may prove deadly if proper medical treatment is not given. The authorities have not given details with respect to my father’s fresh lodgment. It is a travesty of justice,” he said.
The families of some detainees said that their kin had been kept in solitary confinement and denied even basic facilities. The family members of Hurriyat leaders, Mushtaq-ul-Islam and Farooq Ahmed Tawheedi, said that the jail authorities at Jhajjar in Haryana were not allowing anyone to meet the detained leaders.
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