On 24 March 2026, a Delhi court sentenced Syeda Asiya Andrabi to life imprisonment under the UAPA. Two of her female associates were also sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Their lawyers had claimed that they only exercised freedom of speech and there was no instance of harm arising out of the women’s action. Obviously, the court was not convinced. After conviction, the women were defiant; the youngest of them, Sofia Fehmeeda, the Press Secretary of the organisation, questioned the judge, “Why did I get only thirty years, and why did Asiya get life?”

The present writer has been a witness to the times when Andrabi’s outfit, Dukhtaran-e-Millat, though banned in 1987, was in full bloom. By 2001, the separatists’ task of ethnic cleansing of Pandits from Kashmir had been largely completed. Then, the Islamists turned their attention on the Muslims themselves and on their somewhat liberal Kashmiri culture. Political correctness held sway in 2001 and it was taboo to talk of the plight of the Pandit refugees ; to some extent it is so even today and they are largely forgotten. Lalit Koul had started a web journal, Kashmir Herald, to highlight their plight; its archives show that the monthly venture lasted just four years, from June 2001 till May 2005. I had written a few opinion pieces for this journal; one of these was about Asiya Andrabi.

The politically-incorrect editorial, “Soft State, Fickle Political Morality” had appeared in the November 2001 issue. The prompt was Andrabi’s outfit Dukhtaran-e-Millat’s burqa diktat, which clearly threatened violence for those who did not obey. The tenor of the diktat can be best appreciated from Andrabi’s own words during an interview given to Bilal Bhat. “Undoubtedly, girls of our organisation used hard methods to force Kashmiri women for observing purdah… During the initial phase of our activities, we started throwing colour on the non-purdah observing women.” She went on to say that she approached ulema for permission for this and they gave their consent. If it is considered a minor matter, in Delhi, a young man was lynched recently for the offence caused by Holi colour falling on a woman who was not participating in the revelries.

Andrabi did not stop at the burqa. In an interview to The Guardian, she was asked if she supported the killing of Indian police and army men. Her enthusiastic response was, “Not only the police, but all the Indian politicians too.” To the question about her supporting the assassination of India’s Prime Minister Vajpayee, she said, “We would be very happy, inshallah.”

Unlike other separatists, this hard-core supporter of Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan detests any talk of freedom for Kashmiris. She said, “Islam does not believe in geographical boundaries and accession to Pakistan will strengthen Muslim brotherhood.” She wrote in Al-Safa, “Your land Islam, you tribe of Mustafa; creating any platform for nationalism (Kashmiriyat) tantamounts to paving the way for furthering the interests of infidels.” If any doubt is left in the minds of Kashmiris about her approach to their culture, she had told The Guardian, “I oppose traditional Kashmiri culture. We want to return to Islamic culture.”

Hardliner Kashmiris may think that if Kashmir becomes part of Pakistan, there will be no cause for strife left. Andrabi has other ideas as she revealed to the New York Times, “I believe the whole universe should be governed by the laws of Islam, and Allah says all Muslims should be united as one.” She expressed her deep dissatisfaction about the state of Islam in Pakistan and said that after merger with Pakistan, “It will be our first and foremost duty to Islamise Pakistan.”

Asiya Andrabi was finally arrested in April 2018; thanks to India’s liberal democracy and even more liberal judiciary, she freely spewed her hateful bigotry for three decades and the trial dragged on for another eight years. Her conviction is still open to an appeal to the High Court and then to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, closet separatists like Mehbooba Mufti, who had opposed the construction of toilets and other facilities for Amarnath pilgrims at Bal Tal, saying it would disturb Kashmiriyat and had talked of a second partition of India on this issue, have jumped to her defence. Mehbooba has demanded that Andrabi should be released on “humanitarian grounds.”

In 2016, Andrabi’s nephews were arrested in Pakistan with a cache of weapons. She had told The Hindu that, “I spoke to the highest-level officials in Islamabad… They said they have highest regard for me and my relatives’ valuable sacrifices for Pakistan… I told them we were staunch Pakistani patriots.” Andrabi’s husband had changed his name from Faktoo to Qasim so that their two sons could be called “bin Qasim”, in celebration of the eighth century butcher of Sindh. Faktoo is serving a life sentence for murdering a Kashmiri Pandit activist H. N. Wanchoo. Andrabi’s sons have been studying abroad while she, with monetary support from Pakistan-based terrorist Hafiz Saeed, instigated Kashmiri youth to become stone pelters.

Andrabi has enough support outside the country; America’s Muslim Network TV has bemoaned her sentencing, saying that “no Kashmiri civilian was produced during the entire trial to testify that these women had harmed them or their community.” The emphasis is “civilian”; in their view, harm caused to the uniformed Indians is irrelevant to their trial. In the face of all the utterances of Andrabi against freedom for Kashmiris, this outlet says that Andrabi spent decades “advocating for Kashmiri self-determination.”

Another sympathiser is Turkey’s Anadolu Ajansi (AA), a state-run global news organisation, which claims on its website that it “delivers news across the world 24/7 in 13 different languages. In the report on Andrabi’s conviction, it lamented the conviction of Yasin Malik too, “under similar charges.” AA does not mention the US State Department Report of 1995, which had held a Dukhtaran-e-Millat activist responsible for a parcel bomb blast at the BBC office in Srinagar, which had killed one and injured two.

The world has moved away from political correctness in which it was mired in 2001. Terrorists are no more described as “misguided youth” and threats to the lives of the security forces or the Prime Minister are not treated as “freedom of speech.” Kashmiri Pandits, however, remain mostly untouched by this change in mores. Originally about 400,000, less than 4000 remain in the Valley. Widespread killings, burning of houses, rapes and destruction of their religious places were tools for this ethnic cleansing.

Repeated plans for the Pandits’ return to their birthplace have been thwarted. The cruel Bechirag scheme, euphemistically titled the 2001 Roshni Act or The Jammu and Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, passed under the Farooq Abdullah government, facilitated transfer of ownership of the Pandits’ properties to the persons who had illegally occupied these, after the owners escaped with their lives. Most of the grabbers were persons linked to Farooq’s National Conference and Mehbooba’s PDP. In 2018, the J&K High Court declared the Act as ultra vires of the Constitution and ordered the restoration of the properties, but the order is unimplemented so far.

Someday, when the owners are long dead, the properties may be restored to their descendants. Someday, some of the Pandits may return to their homeland. Someday, it will not take eight years for the sentencing of the likes of Andrabi, 39 years if we count the time since Dukhtaran-e-Millat was banned. The Pandits live on hope.

( R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal. )