Srinagar
In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, overcrowded prisons in the territory turn into COVID-19 epicentres as 35 fresh cases were reported in Srinagar Central Jail.
Last year in August, when Modi government repealed the special status of IIOJK after abrogating the Article 370, the number of inmates in the prison witnessed a sudden increase. The occupation authorities have recently stepped up their operations and hundreds of youth while several people have also been imprisoned for anti-India dissent on social networking sites.
The new 35 COVID-19 positive cases at one of the biggest prisons in the occupied territory has come weeks after more than 90 inmates were found positive at Islamabad district jail. Capable of holding not more than 3,234 inmates, prisons in IIOJK currently have 3,700 inmates.
The number of prisoners remains more than double in some jails, like the Islamabad district jail, while the detainees include several hundred women as well as senior citizens (above the age of 60).
Local prison officials admitted that the capacities in IIOJK prisons were inadequate. With fresh cases, the families of detainees have expressed worries over the condition of the inmates.
Qazi Umair, brother of journalist Qazi Shibli, said that the authorities chose to detain Shibli in the middle of the pandemic. “My brother has been taken into preventive custody.
He was detained last month on the eve of Eid and is now lodged at the Srinagar central jail. He was detained first at the police lockup before he was shifted to the prison,” Umair said.
Earlier, Shibli was released after being detained for nine months in a prison outside IIOJK in the run-up to the abrogation of special status over tweets about the deployment of thousands of troops in Kashmir.—KMS
