India sentences Asiya Andrabi to three terms of life imprisonment; associates get 30 years each

NEW DELHI (MNTV) — A special court in Delhi sentenced Kashmiri women’s leader Asiya Andrabi to three terms of life imprisonment on Tuesday, in a case that has come to symbolize India’s use of anti-terror laws against Kashmiri political dissent.

Her associates, Nahida Nasreen and Sofi Fehmeeda, were sentenced to thirty years of imprisonment each in the same case.

The three women, all leaders of the Kashmiri women’s organization Dukhtaran-e-Millat, have been held in Delhi’s Tihar Jail since 2018 — over 800 kilometers from their homes and families in Kashmir.

The sentences were delivered by Additional Sessions Judge Chander Jit Singh, weeks after the National Investigation Agency of India filed sentencing arguments demanding maximum punishment across all convicted charges, invoking deterrence and the collective conscience of society.

The court largely obliged.

Sentence built on speech

The convictions on which these sentences rest bear careful examination. In January, the same court acquitted all three women of the most serious charges they faced — actually waging war against India, funding terrorism, and membership in a terrorist organization.

What the court convicted them of was conspiracy, association, and speech: for what they said, wrote, and publicly advocated over decades of political activism.

The defense had argued in its sentencing submissions that the prosecution failed to demonstrate a single concrete consequence or harm arising from the women’s actions — a point the court itself had raised during proceedings.

No Kashmiri civilian was produced during the entire trial to testify that these women had harmed them or their community.

The defense had asked the court to limit any sentence to the nearly eight years already served. The court declined.

Andrabi, 64, now faces the remainder of her life behind bars.

She suffers from diabetes, asthma, arthritis, angioedema, and bronchospasm.

Nasreen, 58, and Fehmeeda, in her thirties — who has been denied spinal surgery she requires — face thirty years each, sentences that given their age and deteriorating health may amount to the same thing.

Who these women are

Asiya Andrabi founded Dukhtaran-e-Millat in 1987. A graduate in biochemistry with postgraduate studies in Arabic and Islamic sciences, she spent decades organizing religious education for women across Kashmir, running rehabilitation centers for widows and orphans of the conflict, campaigning against drug abuse among youth, and advocating for Kashmiri self-determination — a political position recognized under international law and enshrined in United Nations resolutions.

She has now spent over fifteen years of her life in incarceration across multiple detentions, the bulk of it without conviction.

This sentence ensures she will spend what remains of it in the same condition. Her husband is already serving a life sentence for his involvement in the movement. He has been behind bars for the past 33 years.

Nahida Nasreen, DeM’s General Secretary, holds postgraduate degrees in Zoology and Islamic Studies and was among the organization’s founding members.

Sofi Fehmeeda, its Press Secretary, was first detained under the Public Safety Act as a schoolgirl in Class 10. Repeated incarcerations destroyed her education. She is now in her late thirties and faces thirty more years in prison.

“Our hope is in the court of God”

When the sentences were pronounced, the three women did not break. They spoke.

Nahida Nasreen addressed the court with quiet conviction. Our hopes, she said, are anchored in the court of God, a court that is just, and above all the courts of this world.

Asiya Andrabi was more direct. The judiciary, she told the court, had acted as an extension of the repressive state.

And then there was Sofi Fehmeeda, the youngest of the three, detained for the first time as a schoolgirl, now facing thirty years. In what those present described as a rare, almost plaintive moment, she turned to the judge and asked: why did I get only thirty years, and why did Asiya get life?

What comes next

An appeal to the Delhi High Court is expected imminently. The defense is likely to challenge both the conviction and the quantum of sentence.

International human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have long criticized the UAPA under which these women were prosecuted, calling its provisions overbroad and its use against activists and dissenters a form of political persecution. The UN Human Rights Committee called on India as recently as 2024 to review and amend the law.

For now, Asiya Andrabi, Nahida Nasreen, and Sofi Fehmeeda remain in Tihar Jail, three Kashmiri women, aging and unwell, sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in a prison far from home, for the crime of demanding freedom for their people.