Daily Times

The Indian authorities have shifted over three dozen Kashmiri political detainees to different jails in India.

Over two dozen detainees had been shifted from Kotbhalwal Jail, Jammu, and half a dozen from Baramulla sub-jail to jail in jails of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in India, Kashmir Media Service reported on Monday.

Hundreds of Kashmiri prisoners, including APHC leaders area, were detained in New Delhi’s Tihar jail, Agra Central Jail, UP’s Naini jail, Haryana’s Rootak Jail, Karnal jail, Mumbia, Bangeluru and Rajishtan’s Central Jail Jodhpore. India’s overcrowded prisons confined more than half a million inmates at the end of 2021, with a majority of them being those under trial for crimes they had allegedly committed. Among the 5,54,034 inmates across India’s prisons, 77.1% were under-trials while 22.2% were those who had been convicted by a court of law, said data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

India currently has the sixth-highest share of pre-trial detainees in the world, according to data collated by the World Prison Brief. The five countries that are worse than India are Liechtenstein, San Marino, Haiti, Gabon and Bangladesh. APHC-AJK leaders express anger over blatant rights violations in IIOJK, laud army chief’s statement: APHC AJK leaders Syed Aijaz Rehmani, Muhammad Sultan Butt, Shaikh Muhammad Yaqoob, Shameem Shawl, Mushtaq Ahmed Butt, Syed Manzoor Shah and Qazi Imran have expressed anger over the surge in human rights violations by Indian troops in the garb of cordon and search operations in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir even during the sacred month of Ramadan.

The leaders in a joint statement issued in Islamabad lauded Pakistan Army Chief Syed Asmi Munir for his clear message on Kashmir saying the statement is a source of encouragement and strength for the Kashmiris who are confronting the worst Indian state terrorism for spearheading the struggle for the right to self-determination.

Pakistan, they said, is the real ambassador and benefactor of the Kashmiris and is effectively and successfully advocating the Kashmir cause at the international level. They hoped that Pakistan will never compromise on its principled stand on Kashmir. The leaders appealed to the UN, OIC and human rights bodies to play their role in resolving the Kashmir dispute according to the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.