By Surender Bhutani, IANS
Doha : Salima Hashmi, an activist, painter and daughter of famous Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, has been arrested in Pakistan following the imposition of emergency, fellow activist Asma Jahangir told a TV news channel Sunday.
“I am under house arrest (and) so is my dear friend Salima Hashmi,” Jahangir, president of the Pakistan Human Rights Movement, told the Al Jazeera TV channel from Islamabad.
Salima has been in the limelight for her efforts to normalise India-Pakistan ties. She has been visiting India frequently over the years and has a number of well wishers in that country, particularly in New Delhi.
Given the political situation in recent weeks, she had a premonition of her fate.
Speaking to IANS a few days earlier, she had feared her own arrest once the democratic process in Pakistan was snapped.
“Don’t worry about me. My father, Faiz Saheb, had faced army rules many times and was imprisoned on several occasions. Now it is my turn,” Salima had said.
Her husband Shoaib Hashmi too had been put behind the bars in the 1980s because of his Leftist views.