Gulshan Mufti, mother of Jammu & Kashmir’s incarcerated former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, has sought permission to meet her daughter for just a few minutes but has not been granted permission.
“We wrote a letter to the Jammu and Kashmir Police asking for a short meeting. We even said ‘you can frisk her’. It has been 21 days and we have no word on the arrested leaders. Why are mothers and daughters not being allowed to meet? How will that impact the ground situation,” asked Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter Sana Iltija Mufti in a phone conversation.
Mehbooba Mufti, chief of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and other political leaders, including Omar Abdullah of the National Conference (NC), have been locked up in separate guest houses since August 5 when the Centre moved Parliament to amend Article 370 of the Constitution that gave the state its special status.
Iltija Mufti released a letter addressed to home minister Amit Shah on Independence Day, saying, “Kashmiris have been caged like animals and deprived of basic human rights.”
Doesn’t a citizen of the “world’ largest democracy,” have the right to speak up in the “face of unimaginable repression,” Iltija asked, adding, “It’s a tragic irony that I am being treated like a war criminal for stating the inconvenient truth,” she said.
“I am being treated like a criminal and I am under constant surveillance. I fear for my life along with those Kashmiris who have spoken up,” Iltija said in an audio message that was released along with the letter.
On August 21, the Mufti family sent a letter to the local police asking for a meeting between Mehbooba Mufti and her aging mother but have not got a response to their request.
Iltija Mufti, family sources revealed, managed to travel out of Srinagar but was told that she would be back in detention once she returns.
Her grandmother is not allowed to leave their home in Srinagar, nor is she allowed any visitors. The landline at their residence too has not been restored, cutting off Gulshan Mufti from her granddaughter and other daughters who live outside J and K. The Jammu and Kashmir administration has restored several landlines but not those installed at political homes.
The Valley has been under a lockdown since August 5.