Altaf Shah: jailed Kashmiri separatist leader dies of cancer

He was awaiting trial on accusations of funding terrorist groups and was held at New Delhi's Tihar Jail

Indian paramilitary soldiers patrol the streets of Srinagar, capital of the disputed Kashmir region. EPA

Altaf Shah, a Kashmiri separatist leader and son-in-law of veteran anti-India politician Syed Geelani, died of cancer on Tuesday morning.

Mr Shah, 66, had been jailed at the capital's high-security Tihar Jail, where he was awaiting trial, until he was shifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for treatment in the days before his death.

His daughter Ruwa Shah, a journalist, said that Mr Shah had breathed his last as a “prisoner”.

Mr Shah was arrested in 2017 by the National Investigating Agency, the federal anti-terrorism agency, on charges of allegedly funding terrorist groups.

He was detained along with scores of other separatist leaders after New Delhi clamped down on anti-India politicians in the disputed Kashmir region.

Mr Shah was a member of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, a separatist political party founded by Mr Geelani in 2004.

Mr Geelani died last year at the age of 91 after about 10 years of house arrest. Authorities imposed a curfew in the valley and only a handful of locals were allowed to attend his midnight funeral.

Mr Shah was recently diagnosed with renal cancer and moved from prison to the state-run Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in the capital, where he remained on a ventilator.

His daughter spent the past six months appealing to authorities to grant him bail on health grounds.

She also wrote open letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah last month to request that her father receive proper medical treatment at the premier hospital as she claimed RML did not have an oncology department.

Ms Shah also alleged that the jail authorities had told the court that he only had “diabetes and hypertension”.

“My incarcerated father has been diagnosed with acute renal cancer, which has ... spread to his other body parts, including his bones. It is my whole family’s request to please allow us to see him and consider his bail application on health grounds,” Ms Shah tweeted last month.

The Delhi High Court on October 1 ordered that Mr Shah be shifted to AIIMS and permitted his son and daughter to be with their father for an hour daily.

There was no information on whether his body would be handed over to the family for burial.