No money for trip, kin of Kashmiri prisoners in UP jails beg, borrow, appeal to shift them back

AGRA: It’s been months since the parents of Fayaz Ahmed Meer, who was arrested from his residence in Pulwama district hours before the nullification of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and shifted to the Bareilly jail in UP, have spoken to him. The 28-year-old has in fact met his father Abdul Rashid just once, in October, after the latter managed to make a trip to UP with money borrowed from relatives.But Rashid can recount little of the conversation, for it was in Hindi, a language he has difficulty following. The two weren’t allowed to speak in Kashmiri by jail authorities.
Since then, the parents face the daunting task of collecting at least Rs 20,000 — the cost of train tickets for two to UP, food and accommodation — to meet their son again. “Fayaz was the breadwinner and now we have to manage expenses of a family of five. I go out to beg relatives for money every day,” he told TOI, adding that the family has also approached the district administration for help.
Fayaz, a postgraduate in Political Science from Kashmir University, was picked up from his residence in Pahoo village and booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) on August 3 last year for his alleged involvement in incidents of stone pelting in 2014 and 2016, according to his uncle Mohammad Ashraf.
Ghulam Qadir Lone with his grand daughter.
Fayaz is one of the 200-odd Kashmiri prisoners arrested under the stringent PSA and shifted to various jails in UP during or after events that followed the government's move on Article 370. Like Fayaz’s family, many others told TOI that they are finding it hard to visit their kin as they can’t afford flights, and in some cases, even bus or train tickets as coupled with food, local travel and accommodation, the expenses are at least a minimum of Rs 10,000 per person. It can take up to two days to travel between Srinagar and UP via bus and train.
Kin of Irfan Ahmad Hurrah, a 26-year-old teacher at Darul Uloom Shah-E-Hamdan in Pampore, said they have no means of income except some agricultural land. “We can barely feed the family, forget arranging money to travel,” said his father Mohd Maqbool Hurrah. "Irfan was called to the local police station on July 29 to offer namaaz in a mosque there as the regular maulana was not available. That was the last time we saw him. Days later, on August 9, we were told he had been arrested under PSA for provoking people in the mosque. He was then moved to a jail in UP."
Many families TOI spoke to said it was a huge struggle but that they won’t give up. Sami Jan, daughter of a daily wage labourer and whose brother, Faiz Ahmad Lone, is in a prison in UP has been appealing to the government to shift her sibling back to Srinagar Central Jail. Aizaz Ahmad Dar has also been approaching authorities after his father, Abdul Rashid, a cab driver, was booked under PSA for an alleged attack on a patrolling party in 2016 and arrested on August 2. He has managed to travel to Agra to meet his father just once.
Irfan Ahmad Hurrah’s family members in Pulwama
Then there is Haneef, who can’t get over the trauma of not seeing his father before his demise. He just didn't have the money for the travel. Haneef’s father, Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, breathed his last in Naini jail, Prayagraj, on December 21. The 65-year-old was brought from Anantnag on August 22 and his PSA dossier claimed he tried to disturb “peace and order” in the Valley in 2016 when Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces. Bhat was paralytic and his condition deteriorated in jail. “Haneef has barely spoken to anyone since,” said Mohd Ramzan, a cousin.
Ghulam Qadir Lone, 73, former general secretary of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, who was lodged in the same jail as Bhat has been in depression ever since, said his nephew Naeemullah Azim. “He is old and suffering from multiple ailments. After I met him recently and saw his condition, I have urged the government to shift all 200 prisoners back to jails in Kashmir.”
Asked whether he was aware of the demand of families to bring back prisoners from UP, J&K director general (prisons) V K Singh declined to comment on this issue, saying that “they were just following government orders.”
A senior official from the UP prison department told TOI that consent of the state government and the home ministry is required to shift a prisoner to his home state in case of PSA.
DIG (headquarters) UP Prisons, Love Kumar, said they may soon allow video conferencing facility for inmates and their families so they don’t have to travel all the way from Kashmir to UP.
200 Kashmiris in UP jails
According to jail authorities, 200 Kashmiri inmates are lodged across six prisons in UP. These include Lucknow, Bareilly and Ambedkar Nagar district prison and Agra, Prayagraj and Varanasi central jail. In August last year, 240 Kashmiri inmates were shifted to prisons in UP and about 40 of them have been released following an order of the J&K government.