'Kashmiris caged like animals': Mehbooba’s daughter to Amit Shah

SRINAGAR: In occupied Kashmir, former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter has said that Kashmiris have been caged like animals and deprived of basic human rights.

Mehbooba’s daughter Iltija Javed said this in a letter written to the Indian Home Minister, Amit Shah, Kashmir Media Service reported.

She wrote in her letter that while India celebrated its Independence Day, Kashmiris were caged like animals and deprived of basic human rights. She said, she is not informed when visitors are turned away from the gate and that she is not allowed to step out of her home.

In her letter to the Indian Home Minister, while asking for an explanation for her detention, she said the forces’ personnel cited her media interviews as the reason for her detention. “I’ve been threatened with dire consequences if I speak up again,” the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader’s daughter wrote.

“For the world’s largest democracy, doesn’t a citizen have a right to speak up in the face of unimaginable repression… It’s a tragic irony that I am being treated like a war criminal for stating the inconvenient truth,” Iltija Javed said in the letter.

Iltija Javed has released a second voice message, saying she has been detained at her home, days after her mother was arrested. “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,” she stated in the audio message.

In her first audio message, she had said that her mother was in solitary confinement without access to lawyers or party workers.

Mehbooba Mufti, who was placed under house arrest around midnight last Sunday, was arrested and taken from her home in Srinagar to a nearby guest house the next day.