A prominent pro-freedom leader in Indian-administered Kashmir, Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, has died inside a hospital in southern Jammu city, where he was in detention for the last year. He was 77.
An official from the Government Medical College hospital in Jammu said that the report for COVID-19 was negative but he had developed “respiratory stress”. India has witnessed record coronavirus infections and deaths in the past several weeks.
All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), an amalgam of pro-freedom groups in the region, accused authorities of not taking his health condition seriously.
“Despite repeated appeals to release political prisoners lodged in various jails on humanitarian grounds in view of the devastating Covid catastrophe, authorities are playing with their lives,” the statement said.
Sehrai was the president of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, a pro-freedom group in Kashmir that advocates the merger of Kashmir with neighbouring Pakistan. He was detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a law that allows detentions without trial for up to one year.
Sehrai was a long-time deputy of Syed Ali Geelani, one of the most influential Kashmir resistance leaders who has remained under house arrest for years.
Sehrai spent most of his life as a close aide of Geelani and their association dates back to the 1960s when they were part of Jamat-e-Islam, a local version of Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen or Muslim Brotherhood.
India jailed thousands of Kashmiris, including prominent resistance leaders, as part of its massive crackdown in the wake of the removal of the Himalayan region’s limited autonomy on August 5, 2019. India’s only Muslim region is now directly ruled by the country’s home ministry.
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