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Srinagar: Sama Shabir has seen her separatist father being taken away for jail terms often. She has spent hours in a jail waiting room before catching a glimpse of her father from behind a screen full of scratches in a dimly lit room. She was not allowed to take her school books to the waiting room.
All this could not stop Sama, daughter of top separatist leader Shabir Shah who is lodged in Tihar jail for around a year, from topping the CBSE Class XII exams in Jammu and Kashmir.
Sama, a student of Delhi Public School in Srinagar, has scored 97.8 per cent marks (489 out of 500). She, however, does not regret that her father is not around to join the celebrations.
"My father does not even know about it as we have no contact with him now," Sama, 18, told The Telegraph. "But I am proud of what he has been doing. He has spent 31 years in jails (in his lifetime) and (now that he has spent one more year) I am more proud of him."
Shah, who has spent the prime of his life behind bars for his separatist ideology, was last arrested in July 2017 as part of the Centre's crackdown in the wake of the massive unrest in the Valley following the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in 2016.