A court in the Indian capital, New Delhi, has convicted Syeda Asiya Andrabi, the head of the banned Kashmiri organization ‘Dukhtaran-e-Millat’, who has been imprisoned for many years, and her two associates, Sufi Fehmida and Nahida Nasreen, on charges of ‘waging war against the country and conspiring against the country’ under the anti-terrorism law UAPA.
Asiya, who has been incarcerated in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail since 2017, has been sentenced to life in prison, while Sufi Fehmida and Nahida Nasreen have been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
During a hearing last week in a special court in Delhi, Judge Chandrajit Singh recommended life imprisonment for 65-year-old Asia Andrabi, 59-year-old Nahida and 41-year-old Sufi Fehmida, after which the court announced the verdict on March 24. The NIA told the court that “any sentence less than this (life imprisonment) will undermine public faith in the rule of law.”
However, Shariq Iqbal, the lawyer for Asia and her colleagues, termed the evidence presented by the agency to be insufficient in support of the charges. In the previous hearing, the defense lawyer had said: “These women are highly educated and have been in prison for almost 8 years, 800 kilometers away from their homes.”
The lawyer had said that the three women also suffer from several ailments.
It should be noted that Asia Andrabi has a graduation in home science and an MA in Arabic literature. Nahida holds an MA in Zoology and Islamic Studies, while Sufi Fahmida is a graduate.
The NIA charge sheet alleges that Asiya had ties with Hafiz Saeed, founder of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and that she used to promote violence in her speeches.
In this regard, the agency has also presented an old interview of Asiya in which she had said, “I think more and more youth will join militant groups and our military struggle will become stronger. Guns are a means to achieve our goal, but we also have to strengthen the political struggle.”
According to the agency, 33 cases have been registered against Asiya, 9 against Sufi Fahmida and 5 against Nahida Nasreen in various police stations over the past years.
Thus, the head of the Dukhtars, Asiya Andrabi, was in favor of the implementation of Sharia law and the establishment of a caliphate in Kashmir, but she supported the pro-Pakistan wing of the Kashmiri resistance movement by declaring Indian-administered Kashmir a ‘natural part of Pakistan’.
She would wave the Pakistani flag on Pakistan’s Independence Day and urge the Pakistani government to provide full support to the Kashmiri movement.
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