Muzammil Bashir/ Zafar Dar
On the 5th day of August 2019, an announcement sent shockwaves across Jammu Kashmir that the Articles 370 and 35 A of the Indian constitution had been abrogated. The articles provided a semi-autonomous status to Jammu Kashmir. At the dark of the night around 1 am, on 6 August, the government forces, in huge numbers, knocked heavily at the door of a house in the Bolsu area of Kulgam district.
“Can you accompany us to the next house?”, the forces asked Tasleema Banoo’s two sons. Nadeem, her elder son looked back at his mother and saw tears in her eyes. And it has been 20 months since then.
Nadeem Ashraf (21), was busy scribbling on his notebook like any other day. He was preparing for the fourth paper of his B.A.1 exams, when heavy knocking was heard at the door. Tasleema looked through the window to find ‘a dust of forces in the courtyard of her house.
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Tasleema rushed to the door, answering their constant calls to open the door, “I am going to open the door, I am coming down.” The moment she opened the door, the forces forcibly stormed inside the house and ordered that the lights be turned off.
“We want to question your sons,” they told Tasleema, before pulling one of her sons out of the house. Tasleema was locked inside her house and her son was whisked off in an armored vehicle. “We are taking him to the nearby houses for checking,” they told Tasleema.
Till 3:30 am, Tasleema kept waiting, she says, anticipating her son to return home, but he did not. Tasleema fixed her gaze at the street, from where the armoured vehicles took away her son. With her head against the window, she waited till the light of dawn fell on the streets of Bolsu.
At the first light of the morning, Tasleema rushed to the Police station in Kulgam where the then station house officer told her, “He (Nadeem) is not here, he has been shifted to the Central jail in Srinagar, he will be released after 3 months or 6 months.”
Tasleema went back to the Police station after three months, she went again after 6 months, and yet Nadeem was not released. On the 9th day of August, Nadeem was shifted to the district Jail in Bareilly, along with 19 other Kashmiris. Recently, he has been shifted to the Agra Central Jail.
A Prisoners Diary
In 2019, altogether 234 prisoners belonging to Kashmir were lodged in jails in Uttar Pradesh and 27 in Haryana prisons, the Indian Government had said in the Rajya Sabha. Most of these, 85 including prominent business leaders, Lawyers, Pro-Freedom activists, workers of PDP, NC and Sajjad Lone’s People’s Conference were lodged in Agra Jail, 20 in Bareily and the rest in Lucknow, Ambedkar Nagar, Prayagraj and Varanasi central jail.
Recently, an RTI filed by two students of Kashmir University has revealed that the jails in Jammu Kashmir are overcrowded during times of global pandemic, despite the supreme court orders of decongesting the jails.
Last year in April, as the global pandemic spread in India, a three-member committee headed by J-K State Legal Services Authority Executive Chairman, Justice Rajesh Bindal ordered the release of jail inmates, except those involved in militancy-related cases to decongest the prisons in the Union Territory.
The figures reveal that a total of 4031 prisoners are lodged in fourteen jails across Jammu Kashmir, against a capacity of 3660 persons.
In December, the data accessed by The Kashmiriyat also revealed that a total of 747 prisoners are lodged across the 14 jails in Militancy-related cases,143 are lodged in Srinagar’s Central Jail followed by 130 in Kot Bhalwal jail of Jammu. A total of 1.8 percent out of those arrested in Militancy-related cases have been convicted.
Narrating his ordeal in the jail, Irfan, another prisoner released last year in May, told The Kashmiriyat that it was the toughest and scariest period of his life. It appeared as if they were dead and had been sent to hell. “Yes, it was no less than hell out there, we were kept in high-security prisons, allowed to go out of our cell for an hour, the rest of the 23 years we would have to sit in the same cell.” Many of us wept to want to get fresh air and see the open skies, but we were constantly denied permission to do so, by the authorities out there. “It was nine months of hell.”
Many including Nadeem were detained under the controversial Public Safety Act (PSA), which allows detention without formal charge for up to two years.
It’s unclear exactly how many Kashmiris have been detained or jailed as part of the crackdown that was launched in the aftermath of the abrogation of the Article 370, however, on 20 November 2019, the BJP Government told parliament that they had made 5,161 preventive arrests since 4 August 2019.
“Due to an imbalanced diet, the majority of the prisoners fell sick in the prison. Spending the night in a packed room, with little space even to move was an everyday ordeal we suffered in the Bareilly prison for nine months. We were not allowed to move freely in the open space in the prison, the entire day. The worst part about being in the jail was the state of helplessness, we wanted several amenities, but could not even go out and seek them, we missed our families, wept a lot while we spoke about the well being of our families, we faced a never-ending battle with insects who moved freely on our bodies as the roof was open,” Irfan who was Nadeem’s cell mate at Bareilly District Jail, told The Kashmiriyat.
“Every day, Nadeem looked towards the gate, in anticipation of someone to call him and say that ‘you are being released’.” The time in the Jail, Irfan says, was harrowing. In anticipation of our parents coming to meet us, tears rolled down our eyes.
A Helpless Mother
In Kulgam, Tasleema feels restless at the horrific images of deaths and pain, as pandemic takes a horrifying shape in parts of India. “I have endured a lot of pain and hardships to bring my son up, I can barely sleep at the thought of my son being thousands of miles away from me, where there is a virus and many people are dying,” Tasleema says.
She wakes up in the middle of the night and looks towards the streets which leads to the main road connecting Anantnag township with Kulgam town. “Whenever there is a sound of a vehicle in the night, I rush towards the window expecting that it is the Police who have come to drop my son back home.”
Things took a turn for the worse with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in India. With no news of Nadeem’s condition, the family is restless during the day and sleepless at night. “We knocked on every door. We were in constant touch with the lawyer,” Tasleema told The Kashmiriyat.
“I am dying to see Nadeem again. I spend all my time in tears. His arrest has broken my spirit. There’s no one to help us,” she sobbed, “We are living in fear following the covid resurge. Only a mother knows what separation from a child means to her,” said Tasleema
“I know my son. He is not a militant and never took part in any unlawful activity. I appeal to the government to please release him,” Tasleema pleaded. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, nobody from the family has seen Nadeem as the jail officials throughout India have denied permissions to stop the spread of covid to the jail inmates. Her husband, Mohammad Ashraf Wani, has only seen Nadeem once, it was in December 2019. “Since then, nobody from our house has seen Nadeem.”
Nadeem, according to a Police dossier, has been accused of being an ‘Over Ground Worker’ defined by security forces as non-combatant members of armed groups, usually tasked with logistics, including the movement of Militants and their ammunition. The college-going Nadeem has also been charged with other offences of putting up posters asking people to boycott the 2014 elections – Nadeem was 15 in 2014.
“I do not know if I will ever be able to see my son, I want to see him before I die. I haven’t seen my beloved son for the last 20 months, My heart is getting weak” Tasleema said, sobbing.