Dukhtaran-e-Millat chief AsiyaAndrabi and several of her associates were arrested from Anchidora area of Anantnag district Friday night for their alleged role in female student protests and stone-pelting on forces.
Many other youth were also rounded up by the police during nocturnal raids in Anantnag town. Besides Asiya, DeM general secretary NahidaNasreen and personal secretary FehmeedaSofi and two relatives of the owner of the house where they were arrested yesterday were sent on judicial remand to Central Jail Srinagar by a court at Anantnag on Saturday.
A DeM spokesperson said Asiya and her associates were detained “under inhuman conditions” at police station Sadder for the entire night.
“Their family members who had come all the way from Srinagar to see them were not allowed to meet them,” the statement said.
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Syed Salah-ud-Din condemned the arrests, terming them a “glaring example of Indian government’s stubbornness and frustration”.
“Despite being ill, authorities have arrested Syed AasiyaAndrabi. Besides she, her husband DrQasimFaktoo, who continues to remain under arrest for the past 25 years, is being deprived of proper eye treatment,” Hizb spokesman Saleem Hashmi said in a statement, quoting Syed Salah-ud-Din.
He said, “Such tactics of Indian leadership won’t succeed and it also won’t help them suppress the voice of people.”
Hizb chief asked the world human rights organisations to take notice of such “human rights violations” in Kashmir and impress upon Indian leadership to stop such violations.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Mahmood Shah also strongly condemned the arrests, saying “booking women under false cases is a gross human rights violation”.
“The struggle for Jammu Kashmir is purely indigenous. The martyrs’ blood has driven the masses on the path of freedom struggle. The vicious plans of India cannot suppress it,” LeT spokesman Dr Abdullah Ghazanwi quoted Mahmood Shah as having said.
“The DeM is the representative identity of Kashmiri women. It is a fundamental and just right of every Kashmiri to raise their voice against illegal Indian control. Syeda Asia Andarabi and other DeM activists have not committed any crime by merely protesting for fundamental rights,” Mahmood Shah said.