Senior Kashmiri leader Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, who challenged India’s rule over occupied Kashmir for decades, died on Wednesday while in police custody. He was 78.
Sehrai was admitted to a government hospital with multiple ailments on Tuesday from a jail in the southern Jammu region, officials and his family said.
Sehrai’s son, Mujahid Sehrai, said his father was denied proper medical care while in jail. He said he spoke to his father 10 days ago and he complained of ill health.
“He told us several times in the last few months during his two phone calls a week to home that he was not getting proper medical treatment,” his son said. “We moved a court on April 16 with a petition seeking proper medical assistance for him but the court was yet to review it.”
Sehrai was arrested last July under the Public Safety Act, which allows authorities in occupied Kashmir to imprison anyone for up to two years without trial.
Last week, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference said it was concerned about the health of hundreds of Kashmiri political detainees as India faces a massive health crisis because of an explosion of coronavirus cases. It said the prisoners were being denied “even basic amenities”, leading to “serious health problems among the prisoners”.
India has arrested thousands of Kashmiris under the Public Safety Act since 1989, when an armed struggle erupted in occupied Kashmir seeking the region’s independence or merger with Pakistan. Rights groups say India has used the law to stifle dissent and circumvent the justice system, undermining accountability, transparency, and respect for human rights.
Sehrai was one of the staunchest supporters of Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan. He was head of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat and a member of the largest religious and political group, Jama’at-e-Islam.
He spent more than 16 years in various Indian jails in a political career that spanned nearly six decades. His son was killed in a gunfight with Indian troops in April last year in the region’s main city of Srinagar. He was a member of Kashmir’s main fighter group.
Mohamad Junaid, a New York-based Kashmiri political anthropologist, said “there is no difference between killing and actively creating the conditions of someone’s death.” In a tweet, he said, “When a state can’t take care of its own people, how could it ever look after the health of political dissidents it has declared as enemies and imprisoned?”
Sehrai is survived by his wife, two daughters, and three sons.
Condoling the demise of the freedom fighter, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that he is deeply saddened on the demise of the senior APHC leader in Indian custody.
”My thoughts and prayers are with the late Ashraf Sehrai’s family. I also convey my deepest condolences to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Tehreek-e-Hurriyat Jammu and Kashmir and the Kashmiri people,” he said in a statement.
“Ashraf Sehrai made a significant contribution to the Kashmiris’ struggle for their right to self-determination and suffered lifelong persecution at the hands of India,” he said, adding that the freedom fighter braved his son Junaid Sehrai’s extrajudicial martyrdom last year with exemplary fortitude. Despite his personal loss, he continued his struggle against India’s oppression and illegal occupation, the foreign minister added.
Qureshi said that the government and the people of Pakistan will continue to support the Kashmiris in their rightful struggle till the realisation of their right to self-determination, as enshrined in the United Nations Charter and the relevant UN Security Council resolution.
