Asiya Andrabi, two Kashmiri women convicted after 8 years of trial
The women, who have been held in Delhi's Tihar Jail since April 2018, now face potential sentences up to life imprisonment
NEW DELHI (MNTV) – A special NIA court in Delhi on Wednesday convicted Kashmiri women’s leader Asiya Andrabi and two of her associates on charges related to conspiracy and unlawful association under India’s anti-terror law, ending a trial that saw the three women spend nearly eight years imprisoned before a verdict was even pronounced.
Andrabi (64), founder of the women’s organization Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM), along with Nahida Nasreen (61) and Sofi Fehmeeda (38), was found guilty by Additional Sessions Judge Chander Jit Singh on multiple counts under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code.
The three women are leaders of DeM, one of Kashmir’s largest women’s organizations, which has for decades combined advocacy for Kashmir’s right to self-determination with Islamic activism and women’s religious education.
The women, who have been held in Delhi’s Tihar Jail since April 2018, over 800 kilometers from their homes in Kashmir, now face potential sentences up to life imprisonment.
The court has scheduled sentencing for January 17.
Eight years of waiting
The three women were arrested in April 2018 following a case registered by the National Investigation Agency on directions from the Union Home Ministry.
Yet it took three years, until February 2021, for charges to even be framed against them.
The trial then stretched on for another four years. Judgment was expected in April 2025 but was deferred repeatedly, pushing the verdict to January 2026.
By the time Judge Chander Jit Singh pronounced them guilty on Wednesday afternoon, Andrabi, Nasreen, and Fehmeeda had already spent nearly eight years behind bars: imprisoned not as convicts, but as under-trials awaiting justice.
For their supporters, the delay itself tells a story.
“The process became the punishment,” said a legal observer following the case. “Eight years in a jail far from home, away from family, with deteriorating health and all this before any court had even found them guilty of anything.”
Charges and the acquittals
The court convicted the women under:
- Section 18 UAPA — conspiracy to commit terrorist acts
- Section 38 UAPA — association with a terrorist organization
- Section 39 UAPA — support to a terrorist organization
- Section 121A IPC — conspiracy to wage war against India
- Section 120B IPC — criminal conspiracy
- Sections 153A and 153B IPC — promoting enmity between groups and assertions prejudicial to national integration
- Section 505 IPC — statements conducing to public mischief
However, the court acquitted them on some of the most serious charges they faced: a fact largely absent from initial reports of the verdict in the Indian media.
The women were found not guilty of:
- Section 121 IPC — waging war against India (punishable by death or life imprisonment)
- Section 17 UAPA — raising funds for terrorism
- Section 20 UAPA — being members of a terrorist gang or organization
The acquittal on Section 121, the charge of actually waging war against the Indian state, is significant.
It means the court found no evidence that these women engaged in armed rebellion or violence.
What remains are convictions for conspiracy, association, speech, and writing: offences their supporters say amount to criminalizing political dissent.
A law under scrutiny
The UAPA has faced sustained criticism from international human rights organizations. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and several UN human rights experts have repeatedly raised concerns about the law’s vague and overbroad provisions and its use against activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.
In 2024, the UN Human Rights Committee called on India to review and amend the UAPA.
The same year, the Financial Action Task Force recommended that India put in place measures to prevent the abuse of counterterrorism policies against civil society groups.
Amnesty International has noted that the prolonged detentions and poor conviction rate under the UAPA illustrate how “the process itself has become a form of punishment,” and has called for its repeal.
Who are these women?
Asiya Andrabi founded Dukhtaran-e-Millat in 1987 as a women’s socio-political and religious organization.
A graduate in Biochemistry with post-graduate studies in Arabic and Islamic Sciences, she spent decades organizing religious education circles for women across Kashmir, running rehabilitation centers for widows and orphans, and campaigning against what she described as the exploitation of Kashmiri women.
She has been detained under the Public Safety Act more than 20 times since 1993, including once for opening rehabilitation centers for families of those killed in the conflict. She has spent over fifteen years of her life under incarceration, according to her family members.
The PSA is a preventive detention law that allows authorities in Jammu and Kashmir to imprison individuals without charge or trial for up to two years.
Nahida Nasreen, 61, is DeM’s General Secretary. A graduate in Zoology and Islamic Sciences, she was among the organization’s founding members.
Sofi Fehmeeda, 38, is the youngest of the three and serves as DeM’s Press Secretary.
She was first detained under the PSA as a schoolgirl in Class 10.
Repeated detentions forced her to abandon her education. She has been slapped with PSA around nine times.
Imprisonment far from home
Tihar Jail is over 800 kilometers from Kashmir. For families who can barely afford the journey, visits are rare.
When families do visit, they reportedly face humiliating searches, a practice supporters describe as designed to break the prisoners psychologically.
Andrabi has not seen her husband in years, despite a court order permitting monthly phone calls between them.
All three women suffer from serious health conditions that have worsened during their imprisonment.
Andrabi has diabetes, asthma, angioedema, urticaria, arthritis, and bronchospasm. Fehmeeda suffers from gastric reflux, joint pain, and severe lower back pain requiring surgery, surgery she has been denied. Nasreen has multiple ailments and has been refused adequate medical care.
“The charge is simple”
Supporters of the women have long maintained that their real crime is political.
“The charge against Andrabi is simple,” one profile of her notes. “She fiercely advocates Kashmiri right to self-determination and challenges attacks on Muslim identity and religious freedoms.”
The prosecution alleged that the women used media platforms to spread “insurrectionary imputations,” advocated secession, and promoted enmity between communities.
The FIR accused DeM of calling for “jihad and use of violence against India.”
The defense argued that advocating for self-determination is a political position recognized under international law, not terrorism.
The court’s acquittal on the charges of waging war, funding terror, and terrorist membership suggests it found no evidence of violence.
The convictions that remain, conspiracy, association, speech, rest on what the women said and wrote, not what they did.
“A message to Kashmiri women”
A Kashmiri legal expert, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case, said the prosecution carries implications that extend far beyond the three accused.
“This case was never just about these three women. It is a message to every Kashmiri woman who might think of raising her voice,” he said. “When you prosecute the leader of a women’s organization , one that ran educational circles, under laws meant for terrorists, you are telling an entire population that even their civic and religious activity is suspect.”
The expert noted that the nearly eight years of pre-trial detention undermined fundamental principles of justice.
“When you keep someone in prison for eight years before you even decide if they are guilty, the process itself becomes a form of collective punishment. And when that person is a woman, a mother, a grandmother, held hundreds of kilometers from her family, denied medical care, denied, it is not just legally problematic. It is inhumane.”
He added that the case reflects a broader pattern in how India handles political dissent from Kashmir.
“There is a pattern: arrest Kashmiris under the most severe laws available, hold them for years in jails far from home, delay the trial endlessly, and even if the main charges collapse, secure convictions on lesser counts,” he said.
“The conviction becomes almost secondary. The punishment has already been delivered.”
What comes next
With the conviction delivered, arguments on the quantum of sentence will be heard on January 17, 2026.
Under Sections 18 UAPA and 121A IPC, the maximum punishment is life imprisonment.
The defense is expected to argue that nearly eight years already served should be taken into account under Section 428 CrPC, which mandates that pre-trial detention be set off against any sentence.
An appeal to the Delhi High Court is likely.
For now, the three women remain in Tihar Jail, waiting once again.
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