Yasin Malik writes to Sushma Swaraj on plight of prisoners

Srinagar: Pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader, Muhammad Yasin Malik, has written a letter to Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, invoking the ordeal of the family of Kulbhushan Jadhav to highlight the miseries and alleged harassment faced the Kashmiri prisoners in Indian jails.

''I can comprehend the pain of Jadhav family and when during your speech (in Parliament on December 28) you said that Jadhav’s mother wanted to hug her son after 22 months of long separation but was not allowed to do so, my eyes got wet. My old wounds got scratched too by your poignant lexis. It recalled me of my old mother’s ordeal," Malik has said in his letter, the copies of which were released to media here on Sunday.

The letter also said, “You raised some legitimate questions in your speech about the rights of a prisoner and his family and I also agree with you especially about the right to hug a mother, to touch his wife and to see his children. But this principle should hold same for every prisoner be he a political prisoner, a freedom fighter, a criminal, or any other lawbreaker. I recently met with the families of some prisoners from Kashmir who are in Tihar jail, held for their political beliefs”.

Malik said that during his meeting with the children and wives of these prisoners, “they narrated before me the stories of same malice and humiliations”. He said that the daughter of one of these asked him to do something so that she is permitted to touch her father’s face.

Malik’s Pakistan-based wife Mushaal Hussein had earlier this week said that India has not allowed her and her minor daughter to meet Malik and his family for about three years and New Delhi should show “humanitarian gesture”, the way Pakistan allowed Kulbhushan Jadhav to meet his wife and mother in Islamabad.

Reacting to it, Union Home Ministry had said that she has not shown any interest in visiting India nor has she applied for a visa wince her two-year visa expired in 2015. “Wife of Kashmiri separatist Yasin Malik has not shown any interest in visiting India nor has she applied for a visa since her two-year visa expired in 2015,” a ministry official had said.