11-year-old daughter of top Kashmiri rebel leader issues rare appeal to visit father jailed in India | AP News

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The eleven-year-old daughter of a prominent Kashmiri rebel leader who was sentenced to life in prison in neighboring India issued an emotional appeal on Thursday, urging New Delhi to allow her to meet her ailing father.

Razia Sultan, the daughter of Mohammed Yasin Malik, 57, made this emotional demand after she was allowed to address the regional legislative assembly in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

“I was only two years old when I met my father. I have now turned 11,” she said in a televised speech. “I miss my father like anything. I crave to hear his voice.”

Other news

G20 delegates begin meeting in disputed Kashmir, with region’s intense security largely out of view

Delegates from the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations have begun a meeting on tourism in Indian-controlled Kashmir that was condemned by China and Pakistan, as authorities reduced the visibility of security in the disputed region’s main city.

With G20 event, India seeks to project normalcy in disputed Kashmir

As India prepares to host a meeting of tourism officials from the Group of 20 in the disputed region of Kashmir, authorities have deployed elite commandos and stepped up security in the region’s largest city.

Indian troops kill 2 rebels in Kashmir in ongoing operations

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Indian soldiers killed two suspected militants in ongoing counterinsurgency operations in Kashmir on Saturday, officials said, a day after rebels fighting against Indian rule killed five soldiers in the disputed Himalayan region.

India meets with China, Russia before Central Asia forum

India’s foreign minister has held talks with counterparts from China and Russia ahead of a meeting of a Central Asian security forum.

Sultan said she would hold Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi responsible if any harm was caused to her father. She said she hoped that one day her father would be released, and he had been wrongly sentenced in a “fake case.”

Malik was arrested in 2019 and was sentenced to life in prison last year by an Indian court on charges of terrorism and sedition. His arrest triggered clashes between protesters and police in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir. Two months ago, the Indian National Investigation Agency had also approached the New Delhi High Court seeking the death penalty for Malik. The court has yet to rule on that.

During his trial, Malik protested the charges against him, saying was a freedom fighter. “If seeking azadi (freedom) is a crime, then I am ready to accept this crime and its consequences,” he told the judge ahead of his conviction.

Malik for years had headed the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, one of the first armed rebel groups in Indian-controlled Kashmir, but he later shifted to a peaceful struggle to seek an end to Indian rule in Kashmir.

In 2009, Malik traveled to Pakistan, where he married Mushaal Hussein, and he has only one daughter.

Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India and is claimed by both in its entirety. The countries have fought two of their wars over Kashmir. Rebels have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir’s independence from India or its merger with Pakistan.

Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.