The Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman Syed Ali Geelani Monday strongly condemned the alleged ill-treatment of Kashmiri prisoners in New Delhi’s Tihar jail and urged the international community to use its good offices to “end the long and continued custody of these political detainees”.
“Despite being political prisoners, they are kept in a very humiliating condition with criminals and other convicts,” Geelani said in a statement, and urged the South Asian chief of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) and organisations for human rights to “look into the serious matter”.
“Since the last week of December 2018, all Kashmiri and Pakistani prisoners lodged in Tihar jail are shifted to jail number 8/9 and kept in a two-storey building of ward number 12, which is devoid of any ventilation or sunlight, making the poor inmates shiver in this chilling cold of winter. Although the prisoners repeatedly requested the jail authorities to allow them to sit in the lawn in front of the bark, they imposed more restrictions than acceding to their request,” the statement read, quoting Geelani.
“The authorities intend to bring in more convicts. This will further make the prisoners’ life miserable. The list of relatives who want to meet them is also shortened (sic), which deprives them of the meeting opportunities. The food and drinking water supplied are also unhygienic as result of which many prisoners are suffering from various health issues,” Geelani said, alleging that “sick inmates are left to battle for their lives as no proper medical care is provided to them”.
“The doctors and other health officials posted in the jail come for their duties and show their faces after months. Even some laboratory investigations are performed on court orders but their reports are withheld for unknown reasons and poor prisoners don’t even know what these reports are,” the statement read.
“These inhuman actions are a deliberate attempt to physically and psychologically harm these helpless people,” he alleged, adding that “this biased and revengeful attitude” is just “aimed to satisfy the collective conscience of their vote bank even at the cost of such a humanitarian tragedy.”