Srinagar/New Delhi: Jailed separatist leader Altaf Ahmad Shah passed away at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi early on Monday night, after he was diagnosed with late-stage renal cancer that had spread to other parts of his body, his family said
In a tweet, Shah’s daughter Ruwa Shah confirmed the death. “Abu (father) breathed his last at AIIMS, New Delhi. As a prisoner,” Ruwa Shah tweeted.
Earlier, Ruwa write letters to top officials seeking bail for his father on humanitarian grounds for six days, then the Delhi High Court ordered Shah to be shifted Shah from Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital to AIIMS as the hospice lacked facilities.
His family also alleged denial of medical treatment.
Shah along with six top Hurriyat leaders, Altaf Shah, 66, was arrested in a “terror-funding case” in 2017.
He was the son-in-law of the deceased and senior separatist Syed Ali Geelani.
Shah, 66, lived in the Soura area of Srinagar and was the son-in-law and associate of Syed Ali Geelani and was one of his close associates.
He is survived by his wife, son, and daughters.
Shah is the third political prisoner to die in Indian prisons. Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, 77, who was a close aide of Geelani and expected to succeed him, died on May 5 last year in prison in the Jammu region due to covid19.
Before Sehrai, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, 65, a former member of the now-banned religious-political organization Jamaat-e-Islami, became the first political prisoner to die in Naini jail, Uttar Pradesh state after Aug 5, 2019, when the region's autonomy was scrapped.
(KDC)