Suzanne and Sundas are about the most intelligent, courteous, and self-possessed pair of sisters one could find anywhere.
If one called at their home over the past few years, one of them was likely to run to the door, usher one charmingly into the sitting room, and bring water and then juice or tea, while their father sat down to receive one.
I have seen the girls off and on since they were toddlers, and their behaviour has always been impeccable, enough to make the most exacting parents proud.
They are the sort of girls that the designer of a campaign for ‘social value for daughters’ might want to conjure up. They would be perfect poster girls for a campaign to counter patriarchal biases towards sons.
On Thursday, the sisters came into the limelight for a sad reason. Their photographs were published alongside their public letter to Prime Minister Modi.
It is heart-wrenching for the sensitive, but the letter is nonetheless poised and dignified. In it, the two girls describe their meeting with their father in Tihar Jail—from behind a wall of glass so thick that voices could not penetrate. When their time was up, the intercom went dead, and the lights were suddenly switched off.
They could not even say goodbye. Their father, who suffers from diabetes and arthritis, had lost 15 kilos, they wrote, and had sores from insect bites on his face.
Here is the full text of the letter:
Honorable Prime Minister,
Narendra Modi,
Sir,
It was after eleven long months of a life like that of orphans, that we two sisters were able to see our beloved father Advocate Aftab Hilali Shah aka Shahid Ul Islam, who is the Media Advisor to All Parties Hurriyat Conference (Moderate Group), presently languishing in Tihar Jail New Delhi.
Thanks to God, the Almighty and then to our mother, a source of strength to us in these testing times, who motivated our Daddy to allow us meet him in the jail.
Despite our strong desire, Daddy was reluctant to meet us there. We could realize the reasons of his reluctance only when we had his first glimpse. We were shocked to see him in a very bad shape and worn out as he stood on the other side of a thick glass wall in between.
Leave alone touching him, the glass wall was too thick to let our words reach him. One intercom in the poorly-ventilated room was the only means to converse.
We could barely recognize him. A diabetic with hypertension, arthritis, the frail and pale looking dad has already lost 15 kgs of weight, because of denial of medicare. We were told. It was but natural that our eyes welled up with tears as we could not bear with seeing his sunken eyes. We could only feel his helplessness as he could not plant a kiss on our foreheads, his usual expression of love for us. We too felt very bad in absence of a physical contact with our loving and caring dad!
We the school-going kids, don’t know much about the India, Pakistan and Kashmirpolitics. Our visit to Tihar Jail, reminded us of union of Kulbhushan Jadhav with his aged mother and wife in a prison in Pakistan.
During the 30 minutes telephonic interaction, we came to know that during this scorching heat of around 45 degrees C, he sleeps on the hard floor with mere two blankets provided by the jail authorities. Exposed to insect bites, as marks were visible on his face, he doesn’t even have a pillow to get proper sleep.
Confined to the walls of 8x6 feet cell of High Risk Ward of Tihar Jail, he has been kept with criminals and drug addicts, which exposes him to obvious threat to his life. But then, even meeting Daddy couldn’t end without horror. When we’re still to finish our conversation with him, the phone line snapped and the lights went off.
Not even a whisper from Daddy, it was all dark around as we stood dumbstruck, someone shouted time is over. Thus we were denied even a chance to say good bye to our Dad! We pray that no daughters have to visit Tihar again. Aamin!
Sir, this is the sad story of our father and other Hurriyat leaders presently lodged in Tihar Jail.
Our father, a prominent political leader, is known for his pro-dialogue stance aimed at peaceful settlement of Kashmir, for which he was attacked twice by unknown gunmen, we never expected that peace-loving and moderate voices like him, will be treated so shabbily in the world’s largest democracy.
We the helpless daughters of jailed and ailing man humbly appeal the governments of India and Pakistan to stop ill-treating the political detainees and their families as even criminals and their families have right to be treated humanely.
In the country where Prime Minister’s “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” slogan has rekindled hope among the hopeless disadvantaged girl child, we are unable to attend to our studies.
For us our home is like a prison, while Daddy has been jailed for months, with none of the allegations leveled against him having been proved.
We look forward for an immediate personal intervention by your good self.
Yours sincerely,
Suzanne Shah & Sundas Shah
Daughters of Advocate Aftab Hilali Shah aka Shahid Ul Islam
Students of Presentation Convent Higher Secondary School- Rajbagh Srinagar
Residence: Sanat Nagar, Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir).
A Long Way From Home
Their father is called Shahid-ul Islam, and he has been media advisor and secretary to Mirwaiz Umar Farooq for the last two decades, since long before the girls were born. Shahid has kept up with various sections of society and has been so readily responsive to the media that it is little wonder that his daughters’ letter received wide coverage.
Shahid is among the secessionist leaders the National Investigating Agency (NIA) arrested last July. Like the others arrested, he has languished in Tihar for more than ten months.
His wife claims that there is no evidence linking him to terror funding, the reason behind these arrests. In fact, the Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat is well-known as the ‘moderate’ faction of secessionist politics in the Valley.
A couple of its leaders have covertly met Dineshwar Sharma, the Centre’s interlocutor for talks over the past several months. And one of the group’s leaders—Abdul Ghani Bhat, a former chairman of the Hurriyat Conference when it was united—has publicly stated that there is nothing wrong in engaging in talks. No wonder, the girls state in their letter that their father is ‘pro-dialogue’ and belongs to the ‘moderate’ group.
They end the letter with the hope that the prime minister will personally intervene.
No Scope for Dialogue
Shahid is among the many ‘leaders’ in Kashmir who have fallen victim to the shifting sands of government policy. Around 10 to 15 years ago, representatives of the Centre encouraged them, even gave them perquisites. But over the past couple of years, they have been reviled as promoters of terrorism. The irony is that many of them are equally reviled by large sections in Kashmir, for being too flexibly disposed towards the state. They are especially targeted for abuse by the more radicalised youth, who now control the militant struggle.
In fact, Shahid is among the many prominent figures in Kashmir who live in fear of being gunned down on the streets—for being ready to engage in dialogue.
His daughters point out that he has been targeted twice.
Investigating agencies have taped conversations with some of the more ‘hard line’ separatist leaders, in which the latter admit to receiving large amounts of money from Pakistan to organise riots, arson, and other kinds of destabilising actions.
But Shahid’s relatives say there is no such evidence against him. Since he is the only one from the ‘moderate’ camp to have been arrested last year, it is possible that he was included among the arrested as a result of political calculations.
(The writer is a Kashmir-based author and journalist. He can be reached at @david_devadas.This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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