A Delhi court on Tuesday sentenced Kashmiri woman separatist leader Asiya Andrabi to life imprisonment for conspiring to commit a crime against the state, over two decades after her husband faced a similar fate, marking a first for any leading separatist couple in Kashmir.
Two of Andrabi’s close associates, Sofi Fehmeeda and Nahida Nasreen, were awarded 30 years' imprisonment after being convicted in the same case. It is probably the first instance of Kashmiri women separatists having met such a fate.
The three women have suffered detentions on several occasions before they were last arrested in 2018, in the run-up to the scrapping of the special status in 2019 as part of a new hardline policy against separatists.
Andrabi, 64, is lodged in Tihar jail. Her husband, Ashiq Hussan Faktoo, was awarded life imprisonment for the murder of Kashmiri Pandit rights activist Hriday Nath Wanchoo in 2003.
The couple belong to prominent, educated families in Kashmir. Andrabi, a postgraduate in Arabic and the head of Dukhtaran-e-Milat (DeM) separatist group, is the daughter of Srinagar-based health practitioner Sayeed Shahabuddin Andrabi. Her brother, Inayatullah Andrabi, considered a separatist ideologue, taught linguistics at Kashmir University, quitting his job in the early 1990s to join the separatist ranks. Currently, he lives abroad.
Faktoo, also called Dr Qasim, earned his PhD in Islamic Studies in jail in 2006.
Additional sessions judge Chander Jit Singh of Karkardooma Court pronounced the sentence on Tuesday after concluding arguments on the quantum of punishment.
The three women were arrested in 2018 after a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe initiated on the directions of the Union home ministry suggested they were using online platforms and public events to incite hatred, glorify armed militancy and advocate Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan.
The NIA described DeM as an all-women separatist outfit with the declared objective of secession from India.
On January 14, the court had convicted the trio for their involvement in a terror conspiracy and seditious activities aimed at waging war against the government and promoting the secession of Jammu and Kashmir.
The NIA had sought life imprisonment for the accused for using social media and public gatherings to promote the secession of Jammu and Kashmir and for colluding with Pakistan-based entities, including Hafiz Saeed of Lashkar-e-Toiba, to wage war against India.
The court had earlier acquitted the trio of the specific charge of waging a war against the government under Section 121 of the IPC, citing a lack of evidence.
The court found that the prosecution did not bring on record any material or examine any witness related to any actual incident involving the use of force or arms by the accused or any other person at their instance. “The material on record is limited regarding the speeches/videos/interviews/posts on social media,” the court had said.
The court also did not proceed with the sedition charge as the Supreme Court had ordered a stay on all proceedings with respect to the charges framed under Section 124A of the IPC across the country, as it re-examined the colonial-era law.
A Srinagar-based lawyer said they were convicted for their ideology and what they said and wrote and not for waging war against the state or sedition.
In an interview, Andrabi had once described herself as an ambitious girl who aspired to study abroad but was prevented by her family. She was reportedly influenced by the journey of Maryam Jameela, a Christian convert to Islam.
Even before the inception of militancy, she founded DeM in 1987, which in the early 1990s propagated pro-Pakistan ideology and initiated a burqa campaign. In 1993, she was jailed along with her husband and an infant child for over a year. Their two sons, Ahmed bin Qasim and Muhammad bin Qasim, live abroad.