NEW DELHI: Altaf Ahmad Shah (Fantosh), a veteran Kashmiri freedom fighter died of renal cell cancer in a hospital in the Indian capital city of New Delhi while in the custody in Indian notorious Tihar Jail.
Altaf Shah, 66, passed away at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the early hours of Tuesday, his daughter said.
In a tweet, Ruwa Shah said her father breathed his last “as a prisoner” of the extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shah is the fourth pro-freedom leader from India-occupied Kashmir to have died in Indian prison in the last three years, the reports said.
Son-in-law of the Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Altaf Shah had been languishing in the infamous Tihar Jail in Delhi since his arrest in 2017 in a trumped-up terror funding case.
On October 1, the high court of Delhi ordered that Shah be shifted to a hospital in the capital a day after he was diagnosed with acute renal cancer that had spread to other parts of his body, including his bones, Ruwa said.
According to reports, over the last six months, Ruwa had made repeated appeals to the authorities, including the nation’s home minister, saying Altaf Shah is not keeping well and needed immediate medical attention.
Pro-freedom Kashmiri leadership made continuous appeals to Indian and human rights organizations across to globe to free Altaf Shah on humanitarian grounds. The leadership also appealed that besides Altaf Shah all “illegally detained political prisoners”, including APHC leaders and activists, languishing in different prisons across India since at least 2017 have developed serious health issues due to a lack of healthcare facilities and hygienic meals.
Altaf Shah was a leader of Tehreek-i-Hurriyat Kashmir, a party established by Geelani, after he parted way from Jamat e Islami and APHC, and worked closely with his late father-in-law who died last year after nearly a decade in house detention.
Read more: Don’t make delusional statements about Kashmir issue, deliver instead: Pakistan tells Modi
