Altaf Hamid Rao
MIRPUR, (Parliament Times): India’s notorious prison – Tihar located in its capital New Delhi – represents for Kashmir what Robben Island represented for South Africa. It represents the triumph of glory over evil, it represents the aspiration and determination of 13.5 million people of Jammu and Kashmir State across both sides of the line of control.
Tihar is the revolutionary idea and the ground of the bleeding Indian occupied vale of Kashmir represents the revolutionary action, reports about the fast deteriorating human rights conditions in the IIOJK reaching here Sunday from across the line of control reveals.
All the incarcerated Kashmiri leadership in India’s notorious Tihar jail represents the idea of freedom in personified form of the Kashmiri people. The idea of freedom gets fomented on the ground in the Indian occupied Kashmir valley and gets plummeted in Tihar, our Special AJK Correspondent Altaf Hamid Rao writes on Sunday quoting the latest reports landing here from across the LoC. “Government of India can incarcerate the champions of freedom in human form, but they can not incarcerate the idea of freedom itself. It is a perennial spring which would continue to flow in the people bosoms of the people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir and will make in roads in every house hold in the Indian Illegally occupied Jammu Kashmir”, this Our Correspondent said quoting the freedom-loving Kashmiris struggling for liberation of the motherland for last 75 years in general and since August 05, 2019 in particular.
“From Tihar will light the candle of faith, the candle of knowledge, the candle of peace and the candle of freedom. Freedom till eternity”, the Kashmiris fully believe. Let us the case study of illustrated Kashmiri freedom fighter Mussarat Alam Butt, the Chairman of All Parties Hurriyat Conference in IIOJK. A boy hailing from thickly populated Tankipura locality of Habaqadal area of occupied Srinagar, who got orphaned in childhood and was raised by his uncles. From the very beginning, Musarrat had the torch of freedom lighting in his chest. He emerged the most prominent figure in Amarnath land row of 2008. Hearing his popularity among youth, the government of India incarcerated him in Tihar jail in 2008. He has a son and his wife is not working. They have not met him since 2008. Since his family could not afford to go to Delhi to visit him to inquire about his worsening conditions behind the bars.
He was often put in isolation in Hindoli jail without any money. Resultantly he has to strife hard in the ongoing solitary confinement. Muhammad Farooq Dar, another ill-fated Kashmiri inmate of the notorious Tihar Jail, who also hails from the Habaqadal area of Srinagar. He also championed the cause of freedom since 1989. He is a JKLF commander who headed an army of 40 thousand young Kashmiri boys in 1989. He was incarcerated in June 1990 by the Indian government and was pressurized by the Indian occupational forces to ask his army of his 40 thousand boys to surrender the guns in lieu of Rs. 05 crores. But he categorically refused the deal.
Humiliated by the refusal, the government of India made Farooq Ahmed Dar under duress do the confession of the killing of 24 Kashmiri pundits. His elder brother Perveiz Ahmed Dar was brutally murdered by the Indian occupation forces while he was on way to his office at Sheir e Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) at Khanka – e – Mualla at Srinagar, a report revealed. The father of the ill-fated Perveiz Ahmed Dar while hearing the brutal assassination of his son by the Indian troops got analytical stroke on the left side of his body. The cases of Farooq Ahmed Dar were taken by the best legal mind from Kashmir (Late) Prof. Dr. Bheam Singh Advocate, then also the chairman of Kashmiri lawyers group in the Indian Supreme Court.
All the 24 murder charges leveled against Farooq Ahmed Dar were proved fabricated in the Indian Supreme Court. But it took him 16 years of his life from 1990 to 2006 to prove his innocence. Farooq Dar was against incarcerated in 2017 in a fake money laundering case slapped against him along with other Kashmiri leadership. In Tihar Jail’s block No. 02 Khare, the Superintendent of the jail is stated to be so biased, Farooq Dar, by having been utterly perplexed and upset, went on hunger strike to death and is being forced fed, another report underlined.
Ever since his solitary confinement in the high risk Tihar prison, Farooq Dar was not ever allowed by the brutal Indian authorities to see his family including his 08 years old innocent daughter and the wife despite the repeated attempts by the family, the report said.
It may mentioned here, according to another report, the money sent by the families of these jailed Kashmiri leaders is sent back deliberately by the Tihar jail authorities on the pretext of the wrong address. In the holy month of Ramadan, the tap water was stopped in the washrooms deliberately in the jail so that they were not able to perform ablutions for offering 05-time prayers. This is the direct interference imposed by the Indian on religious freedom of the Kashmiri Muslims, the report said Tihar jail authorities are carrying out the right wing Hindutava agenda of the hard-liner Modi-led BJP government of India, independent observers say.
Also the lawyers in Delhi Courts are asking for a whooping fees of Rs. 05 million per hearing – which is not affordable for the already all-manner suppressed families of the jailed Kashmiri leaders, according to another report. It has also jeopardized the safety and security of women and children back home in Kashmir where trigger Indian occupying troops can be seen at every nook and corner in the strife-torn disputed occupied State.
Being stereo typed, the families of these imprisoned Kashmiri leaders don’t feel safe to travel to Delhi, due to prevailing right-wing atmosphere in Delhi, the report concludes.