Defense demands time served, NIA pushes for life: Sentencing battle concludes in Asiya Andrabi case
Where there is no proven harm, the defense argued, there can be no justification for the maximum punishment
NEW DELHI (MNTV) — The special NIA court in Delhi heard competing arguments on the quantum of sentence in the case of Asiya Andrabi, Nahida Nasreen, and Sofi Fehmeeda, as the prosecution demanded life imprisonment and the defense asked the court to limit any further punishment to the period the three women have already served — nearly eight years behind bars.
Written submissions were filed by both sides before Additional Sessions Judge Chander Jit Singh.
The date for sentence pronouncement has been set for 24th March.
The three women, all leaders of the pro-freedom Kashmiri women’s organization Dukhtaran-e-Millat, were convicted in January on multiple counts under the UAPA and the Indian Penal Code, including conspiracy to commit terrorist acts and conspiracy to wage war against India — though the same court acquitted them of actually waging war, of funding terrorism, and of terrorist membership.
State’s case: deterrence above all
The NIA’s arguments, filed through advocate Kanchan, rest heavily on the twin doctrines of deterrence and the protection of society.
The agency argued that the offences are not crimes against individuals but against the state itself, and that any leniency would undermine public confidence in the law.
It invoked the collective conscience of society as justification for maximum punishment across every convicted charge — including, remarkably, that those sentences for the lesser IPC offences run consecutively rather than concurrently, multiplying the punishment for what amount to speech offences.
The argument is sweeping in ambition and thin in proportion. The NIA sought life imprisonment under Section 18 UAPA and Section 121A IPC, ten years each under Sections 38 and 39 UAPA, and maximum terms under Sections 153A, 153B, 120B, and 505 IPC — the last three being offences that carry maximums of three years, and which are essentially convictions for the content of speeches and writings.
To justify this severity, the prosecution leaned heavily on evidence that the court itself did not find sufficient to sustain its most serious charges. It cited Andrabi’s statements about Kashmiri right to self-determination, her history of FIRs — 33 cases registered against her across Jammu and Kashmir — and alleged links to Pakistan-based organizations.
But this is precisely the difficulty: the same court that is now being asked to impose life imprisonment already determined that the evidence did not prove waging war, did not prove terror funding, and did not prove terrorist membership.
The NIA’s sentencing document essentially re-argues the case it lost, dressing discarded allegations in the language of aggravation.
More troubling still is the prosecution’s invocation of the Pahalgam, Pulwama, Uri, and Lal-Qila attacks to argue that incendiary speech leads to violence — a chain of reasoning it never established during the trial itself.
No causal link between anything these women said or wrote and any act of violence was proven before the court.
Citing terrorist attacks in a sentencing document, without having established that connection at trial, is not evidence — it is atmosphere.
It is an attempt to drape these women in an association the court’s own verdict refused to confirm.
The NIA also submitted a report from the ADG (CID), J&K Police, dated January 27, 2026 — filed after the conviction — listing pending cases against all three women as evidence of habitual offending.
That many of these cases are pending precisely because the government has barred the women from being taken to Kashmir to appear before those courts is an irony the prosecution did not address.
The state creates the procedural obstruction and then cites the resulting backlog as evidence of criminality.
Defense: eight years is enough
The defense’s written submissions, filed by advocate Shariq Iqbal, open with a reminder that sentencing is not a mechanical exercise. Drawing on Supreme Court precedent — including Santa Singh vs. State of Punjab and Deo Narain Mandal vs. State of UP — the defense argued that punishment must be individualized, proportionate, and grounded in the actual facts of the case, not in abstract theories of deterrence deployed to paper over an absence of proven harm.
At the heart of the defense submissions is a point the NIA conspicuously sidesteps: the prosecution was unable to demonstrate any concrete harm or disturbance directly resulting from the women’s actions.
The defense noted that the court itself raised this question during arguments before the judgment was reserved — and that the prosecution had no satisfactory answer.
The judgment records the absence of any demonstrable effect. Where there is no proven harm, the defense argued, there can be no justification for the maximum punishment.
On the NIA’s attempt to use the pending cases as evidence of habitual offending, the defense pushed back sharply. Many of those cases cannot proceed because the government has directed that the women not be taken out of Delhi. Two cases have already ended in discharge. Most significantly, in a separate NIA case involving Hafiz Saeed, Andrabi was discharged of all allegations relating to terror funding and incitement to violence — a discharge the prosecution chose not to appeal, giving it legal finality.
The NIA’s suggestion in its sentencing document of foreign entanglements and active incitement is therefore a claim its own litigation history contradicts.
The defense also raised a troubling procedural point about the proscription of Dukhtaran-e-Millat — a foundation of the prosecution’s case. The women’s petition challenging that proscription was held within the prison mail system for nearly two years.
It was only after the High Court intervened that it was forwarded to the Ministry.
The Ministry has still not responded. The women were effectively prevented from challenging the legal basis of a key charge against them. That the state now seeks life imprisonment partly on the basis of that unchallenged proscription compounds the injustice.
The defense placed before the court the human realities the NIA treated as irrelevant. Andrabi, 64, holds a B.Sc. in biochemistry and an M.A. in Arabic, and has spent decades running schools, rehabilitation centers for widows and orphans, and campaigns against drug abuse and exploitative marriage practices.
Nasreen, 58, holds postgraduate degrees in Zoology and Islamic Studies.
Fehmeeda, in her thirties, was first detained under the Public Safety Act as a schoolgirl in Class 10, her education destroyed by repeated incarceration.
All three have maintained good conduct in Tihar Jail.
All three are seriously ill. All three have been held 800 kilometers from their homes and families since July 2018 — kept in solitary confinement for a period, moved to regular cells only after the High Court stepped in.
The defense’s prayer is straightforward: limit any further sentence to the period already undergone, or impose the minimum permissible under law.
Nearly eight years, it argued, is itself a substantial punishment — delivered, it bears noting, entirely before any court had found these women guilty of anything.
What the court must weigh
The NIA’s sentencing case, read against the defense’s submissions, reveals a fundamental tension at the heart of this prosecution.
The state secured convictions for conspiracy, association, and speech — and now seeks to punish them as if it had proven violence.
It cites attacks it never linked to these women.
It lists cases it helped obstruct. It invokes deterrence while glossing over the fact that the court found nothing to deter beyond words.
The defense, by contrast, asks the court to do what sentencing law has always required: look at the person, not just the charge; look at the harm caused, not just the harm alleged; and ask whether a punishment not yet imposed is still necessary for women who have already endured eight years of imprisonment, illness, isolation, and the slow erosion of everything that makes a life.
Whatever sentence the court delivers, an appeal to the Delhi High Court is expected.
For Asiya Andrabi, Nahida Nasreen, and Sofi Fehmeeda, the wait continues.
We must take charge of our narrative. Research indicates that 92% of their Muslim coverage is negative. Help us change that.
Have Your Say!
Have you been affected by the issues raised in this story? Please share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@soundvision.com.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a Muslim Network TV’s representative. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
Tweet: @MuslimNetworkTV
