ISLAMABAD, July 04 (INP): The Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) has strongly condemned the denial of bail to its illegally detained Chairman, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, who continues to languish in India’s infamous Tihar Jail over the last three and a half years.

According to Kashmir Media Service, the DFP Acting Chairman, Mehmood Ahmed Saghar in a statement in Islamabad, terming Shabbir Shah’s illegal detention as sheer vengeance, said that he was being victimized for his unprecedented role in the Kashmiris ongoing struggle for right to self-determination.

He said that Indian authorities had since long been using detentions as a weapon to punish and persecute Kashmiri Hurriyat leaders for the expression of their conscientiously held political beliefs and for raising the voice against the injustices and indiscrimination meted out to the people of Kashmir at the hands of Indian authorities.

“Denial of bail is not new for Shah Sahib, he had faced detentions and spent more than half of his life in the Indian jails. Indian secret agencies have been booking Shah Sahib under fake charges since 1968 but not a single allegation has been proved in any court of law”, Saghar said, adding that he was arrested by the ED authorities in 2017 under fictitious cases and sent to New Delhi’s Tihar Jail.

“Nearly four years have passed but the ED authorities have badly failed in proving a single allegation against him so far”, the DFP leader said and added that it was quite astonishing that rather deciding the case on merit Indian so-called judges were asking strange questions that have nothing to do with the case.

Saghar, while lauding Shabbir Shah’s political will and steadfastness, said that such tactics meant to linger on his detention won’t help Indians to break his political will.

The DFP leader urged the international human rights organizations to take notice of the continued detention of Shah and influence the government of India to stop persecution of the Kashmir political prisoners on the basis of the political beliefs.

INP/AK