SRINAGAR: Death of a 65-year-old Kashmiri political prisoner has caused worries among the family members of the Kashmiri detainees lodged in various Indian jails.
Ghulam Mohammad Butt, a prominent member of Jamaat-e-Islami, was one of hundreds of people detained under draconian law Public Safety Act (PSA) after the Indian government revoked special status of occupied Kashmir on August 5. Ghulam Mohammad Butt, a resident of Kulangam village in Kupwara district, presented himself before the police post on July 17. A month later, family came to know that before death he was shifted to a faraway jail in Allahabad district, India.
Hanif, son of Ghulam Mohammad Butt, in a media interview in Srinagar said that the family could not afford to travel to meet him in the jail. He said that last week, two policemen came to his home and informed him that his father’s detention has been quashed, because of an illness and he should go and bring him home.
He said that he went to Allahabad jail, where the jailer told him about the death of his . The only illness the deceased ever suffered was a limp in one leg caused by injuries inflicted during custodial torture by the army in 1993, Hanif said.
Atiqa, a 55-year-old widow, is also now worried about her 25-year-old son, Faisal Aslam Mir lodged at a jail in Ambedkarnagar, India.
Showing Faisal Aslam’s medical prescription, she said that her son was suffering from bipolar disorder and occasional seizures, a condition she said he developed during his two-year-long illegal detention after his arrest in 2016. “I do not know if he is being treated. I do not have money to visit him,” she added. Faisal was the only breadwinner for the family.
Mian Abdul Qayoom, President of Kashmir High Court Bar Association, has also been detained under the same draconian law.
Shabbir Ahmad Butt, an Executive Member of the HCBA, said that Mian Qayoom’s family members had met him at Agra jail in India recently. “He is a diabetic whose one kidney has been removed. His blood creatinine levels had gone high and needs to take a medicine nine times a day,” he added.
Irfan Meraaj, a researcher at Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, said that he found most families of the detainees reeling under anxiety because there was virtually no communication with prisoners.
Parvez Imroz, the founder and President of the JKCCS said that lodging Kashmiri prisoners outside occupied Kashmir violated Indian Supreme Court’s directions and also international law.
With input from KMS
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