In the first week of August last year, the stage was set for Union government of India to remove the special status of the conflict-ridden Jammu and Kashmir. To ensure that everything be under their control, the government led by Narendra Modi detained thousands of people across the erstwhile state. The govt didn’t even forgive the mainstream politicians who have acted as a bridge between the centre and the state for years. Dozens of such pro-Indian politicians and activists, including the former three Chief Ministers of the region, are still under detention.
News of detention of these politicians usually are those who are focused on but thousands of everyday Kashmiris who were detained on the pretext of ‘threat to law and order’ and then shifted to outside valley are still behind bars. Although the government claims that ‘everything is normal in Kashmir’, there are many signs that it is not.
TwoCircles.net will be doing a series of stories in which we will be highlighting the struggles of families whose kith and kin have been detained and shifted to different jails across the country.
In the first part of the story our correspondent from Kashmir Auqib Javeed meets 60-old women whose sole bread earner was detained on August 5 and shifted to Ambedkar Nagar jail, in Uttar Pradesh.
Srinagar: It has been over five months since Ateeqa Bano of Maisuma locality of Srinagar has heard her son’s voice. She doesn’t know the whereabouts of her son. Her only wish is if ‘she could fly’ to the prison where her son has been kept.
Her son, Faisal Aslam Mir (30), who is a businessman and the lone bread earner of the family, was booked under Public Safety Act (PSA) shortly after government of India abrogated Article 370 of the Indian constitution. Immediately after his arrest on August 5, Faisal was transferred to a prison in Uttar Pradesh, some 1200 km away from home – making it virtually impossible for his ailing mother to visit him.
Ateeqa lives alone with her son. Her husband died over a decade ago leaving Ateeqa and her young son destitute. She has known nothing but struggle in her life, she says, and mourns how life has been cruel to her.
Ateeqa’s other child, her daughter, is married and lives in another part of the city, but Ateeqa has felt more attached to her young son. Faisal has spent most of his time, recently, in jails, being subjected to constant detentions and arrests by the police.
She says he was detained near the Central Reserved Police force’s (CRPF) camp barely few meters from his house and kept at Maisuma police station for three days.
‘I was not doing well and my son went outside to buy the medicines for me. As he stepped out, I pleaded him not to go as it’s curfew outside, but he said that he will be back within few minutes’, Ateeqa says.
After few hours when Faisal didn’t return, she started looking for him hear and their but little did she knew that he was detained.
‘When Faisal didn’t return till late evening, my heart start beating fast, I could feel that something is wrong’, Ateeqa says.
At late evening, around 6PM, Faisal’s friend came to inform Ateeqa that her son has been detained by the police. Ateeqa rushed the police station while beating her chest and pleated the concerned officials to let her son go. Living in a two-storied muddy house, Ateeqa waits anxiously, like hundreds of other women who wait for the family members to return home. Her eyes have dried-up now from past five months she hasn’t heard anything about her son.
Faisal was kept in local police station for three days then he was shifted to Central Jail Srinagar, until 21 August, after which he was moved to a Ambadkar Nagar jail, in Uttar Pradesh.
‘When I went to meet him to Central Jail, I was told that my son has been under Public Safety act (PSA) shifted to Uttar Pradesh’, Ateeqa says. Ateeqa has never traveled to outside valley; she doesn’t know how to book air tickets and where to go.
‘My heart sinks in sorrow; it would have been okay if they would have kept him in any jail of the valley. I could have seen and met him easily but it has been over 170 days that I haven’t seen my son’, Ateeqa says as her eyes welled up with tears.
Experts say that government deliberately shift many detainees to outside jails to ‘break their will.’
‘The detainees’ family can’t afford to meet them, because this will drain out their economy plus it’s done to break the people, otherwise they could have kept them in the valley’, says Advocate Parvaiz Imroze
Faisal used to do a small business in the Lal Chowk, the business hub of the Srinagar City. Whatever he used to earn he would spend that on home.
‘What I have go through these months only Allah knows because there was no one who could help me to run the house and it was impossible to meet my son with empty hands’, Ateeqa says. Ateeqa got the sigh of relief on January 1, when the government announced that the families can talk to the detainees via video conferencing.
‘On the next day I rushed to the police station with the hope that I could finally see my son but was disappointed to know that the facilities are only for the people of whose kin have been detained in the Jammu region (some 300 km away from the Kashmir Valley)’, Ateeqa says.
Faisal’s council who represents him the Jammu and Kashmir High Court has filed a habeas corpus petition demanding quashing of his PSA.
‘I have filed the petition in the court and we are waiting for the reply from the Honourable court’, said Advocate Zia.
Faisal was detained just 13 days after he came back of serving two years behind prison in the Kashmir. He was detained under the PSA and was released after two years in the month of July, 2019.
Ateeqa’s ordeal is not alone. Thousands of Kashmiri men are under detention in Kashmir and various jails outside the valley after government cracked down on mainstream and separatist leadership following its decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Indian constitution.
(In the 2nd part of the series TCN will explore another story of a family broken up through these detentions)