The Narendra Modi-led Indian government has snatched the properties and other assets of more innocent people in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir to punish them for their affiliation with the ongoing freedom movement. According to Kashmir Media Service, in its fresh move the Modi regime has seized the seven immovable assets and bank deposits worth Rs 5 crore belonging to Hurriyat leaders and activists including Zafar Akbar Butt, Qazi Yasir, Muhammad Iqbal Mir, Muhammad Abdullah Shah and Fatima Shah. The assets were attached by India’s dreaded probe agency Enforcement Directorate in false cases registered against them.

The Indian authorities have already confiscated the headquarters of All Parties Hurriyat Conference in Srinagar and hundreds of houses and properties belonging to Hurriyat leaders and organizations including Syed Ali Gilani Shaheed, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Aasiya Andrabi and Jamaat-e-Islami across occupied Kashmir. The occupation authorities have also demolished many residential houses, shops, shopping complexes and other properties in the occupied territory. The attaching or confiscating Kashmiris’ properties every other day by India is a new way of rendering the people of occupied Kashmir homeless and landless. The action is aimed at forcing them to give up their support to the ongoing freedom struggle. The action is a sheer political vendetta on part of Modi’s Hindutva regime.

Indian troops are also regularly destroying the Kashmiris’ houses during violent military operations. Demolition of properties, illegal confiscations and forced evictions are part of India’s systematic campaign to cripple the Kashmiris economically. Modi must remember that India’s brutal military occupation and colonial tactics have failed to subdue the Kashmiris’ resolve for freedom in the past and will meet the same fate in future as well. The world community must take cognizance of brutal actions of India in occupied Kashmir and force it to fulfill its promise of giving the Kashmiris their right to self-determination.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)