Indian army’s 35th RR held responsible for martyrdom of Advocate Jaleel Andrabi
APHC pays tribute to noted human rights activist on 30th martyrdom anniversary
Srinagar: Justice continues to elude the family of martyred human rights activist and lawyer Jaleel Andrabi, even after the passage of 30 years of his brutal killing in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
According to Kashmir Media Service, Jaleel Andrabi was arrested on March 8, 1996, by Major Avtar Singh of the Indian Army’s 35th Rashtriya Rifles. Three weeks later, on March 27, 1996, his body was found floating in the Jhelum River near Padshahi Bagh in Srinagar.
A prominent advocate and human rights defender, Jaleel Andrabi was arrested and murdered for documenting rights violations committed by Indian troops in IIOJK. Until his death, he remained a vocal critic of the actions of Indian forces in the territory.
The trussed-up body of Jalil Andrabi body was found in a burlap bag. Andrabi, who was forty-two, had been shot in the head, his eyes gouged out, and had apparently been dead for at least a week before his body was discovered. Eye-witnesses said that he was detained at about 6:00 pm on March 8 by personnel of a Rashtriya Rifles unit of the Indian army, who intercepted his car a few hundred yards from his home in Srinagar.
On March 9, the IIOJK Bar Association filed a habeas corpus petition in the High Court, which ordered the army to produce Andrabi. However, the army denied his custody, and the court subsequently granted repeated extensions to the government over the following weeks.
APHC spokesman Advocate Abdul Rashid Minhas, in a statement issued in Srinagar, eulogized Andrabi’s sacrifices for the Kashmir cause. He said that his gruesome killing remains deeply etched in the collective memory of the Kashmiri people, who will never forget his contributions. He reiterated that Andrabi was martyred after his arrest on March 8, 1996, and that his body was recovered three weeks later from the Jhelum River.
The statement held the Indian Army’s 35th Rashtriya Rifles responsible for the killing of Advocate Jaleel Andrabi.
Meanwhile, APHC-AJK Convener, Ghulam Muhammad Safi, in a statement issued in Islamabad, also paid tribute to Jaleel Andbrabi on his 30th martyrdom anniversary. He appealed to international human rights organizations, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, and Asia Watch, to take serious notice of the human rights violations by Indian forces in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
