In the late 1980s, as the Indian state responded to Kashmiri demands for self-determination with overwhelming military force, a new form of warfare emerged in the valleys and villages of Kashmir.
The systemic use of sexual violence as a weapon of occupation to humiliate communities, terrorise families and break the will of the people became standardised in the Indian military. As women, young and old, were raped and gang-raped, minor girls were molested and young brides were detained or disappeared, an all-women organisation emerged in 1987 from the crucible of
Kashmir’s growing resistance as a response to the violence, offering refuge to women and girls.
At a time when women’s voices were being marginalised even within the resistance movement, Aasiya Andrabi founded Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation), providing Islamic education and social support and creating a space for women to claim agency.
The organisation was radical in its defiance of the occupation but conservative in its ethos — promoting Islamic education, establishing rehabilitation centres for widows and orphans of conflict victims and organising women against the epidemic of sexual violence by occupation forces.
As the occupation intensified and escalated its use of rape against Kashmiri women, the organisation’s work became increasingly political.
By 1990, the Indian government banned Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM), forcing the movement underground. Within months of the ban, the mass rape that would finally draw international attention to the plight of women in Kashmir was perpetrated when, in February 1991, Indian army forces laid siege to the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpura.
For hours, soldiers separated men from women and gang-raped women and girls aged 13 to 80. The Indian government dismissed the international outcry as “terrorist propaganda”.
In 2016, India’s National Investigation Agency proscribed DeM as a “terrorist organisation,” citing links to Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence and alleged support for banned figures.
By labelling an organisation of women providing education and rehabilitation as “terrorist”, India sought to criminalise and malign the inalienable right of Kashmiris to self-determination as extremism and to paint women who organised against rape as security threats, turning them into enemies of the state.
Despite the proscription, DeM continued to provide material support to families affected by the occupation.
Three decades later, in March 2026, the same machinery of repression that had forced Aasiya Andrabi underground in 1990 condemned her to effectively die in prison.
Andrabi was accused of terrorism, waging war against the Indian government and being a member of a terrorist group — charges that were not substantiated.
A Delhi court handed Andrabi, now a frail 64-year-old, three-consecutive life sentences — effectively a death sentence. The prosecution’s case collapsed under scrutiny.
Azad Essa’s analysis in Middle East Eye reveals the Kafkaesque truth: the court acquitted Andrabi of the most serious charges, as evidence failed to hold up. She was acquitted of “waging war against India”; there was insufficient evidence to substantiate a charge of terrorism; no arms were recovered from raids on her property and no acts of violence were committed.
In the 290-page judgment, Judge Chander Jit Singh explicitly acknowledged this failure of evidence. Yet he imposed the maximum penalty, citing India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), for her speech, association and refusal to abandon the cause of Kashmiri self-determination.
The court treated a lifetime of organising women against sexual violence as equivalent to terrorism. Effectively, the court determined there was no evidence to convict Andrabi but nonetheless weaponised the law against her to criminalise her existence and voice.
Numerous human rights groups have highlighted the arbitrary detention, denial of due process and medical neglect that define Andrabi’s treatment.
The Worldwide Lawyers Association has called for “urgent international legal scrutiny”, noting “prolonged pretrial detention, denial of due process and the imposition of life sentences amounting to incarceration until natural death”.
The persecution of Aasiya Andrabi cannot be separated from India’s military occupation. Kashmir is the most militarised zone on Earth, with between 700 000 and a million Indian troops stationed in the Valley — a ratio of one soldier for every 10 to 15 civilians. The region functions under a permanent state
of emergency.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, enacted in 1958 and extended to Kashmir in 1990, grants the Indian military sweeping powers to arrest without warrant, enter and search premises and shoot to kill based on suspicion, all with immunity from prosecution.
The Public Safety Act (PSA), under which Andrabi was detained more than 20 times, allows for administrative detention without trial for up to two years. It has been used to imprison thousands of Kashmiris, including children, journalists and human rights activists, without charge or judicial review.
Amnesty International’s report on the PSA documented how this “lawless law” enables arbitrary detention without trial, denial of due process and medical neglect in the treatment of Kashmiri activists.
The UAPA, under which Andrabi was convicted, criminalises “unlawful activities” defined broadly to include “disclaiming, questioning, disrupting” the territorial integrity of India.
It allows for pretrial detention for up to 180 days without filing charges and places the burden of proof on the accused — a reversal of legal principles. Bail is virtually impossible and the presumption of innocence is abolished.
Together, the laws create a machinery of permanent martial law where democratic norms do not apply. They enable the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Between 8 000 and 10 000 Kashmiris have been subjected to enforced disappearances, thousands of women have been raped and not a single Indian soldier has been held accountable.
The persecution of Andrabi and DeM must be understood within the context of India’s accelerating settler-colonial project in Kashmir.
On 5 August 2019, the Indian government unilaterally revoked Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution, which had granted Jammu and Kashmir special autonomous status within India, pending a referendum on self-determination.
Article 35A, operational since 1954, empowered the Kashmiri state to define “permanent residents” and grant them exclusive rights to land ownership, state employment and welfare benefits.
As Kashmiri academic Hafsa Kanjwal argued in Washington Post, the revocation marked a turn in India’s “settler colonial project in Kashmir, one akin to Israel’s in Palestine”. Land rights were “the last thing that Kashmiris were holding onto to preserve some semblance of their nationhood”.
Andrabi is not alone. Her associates, Sofi Fehmeeda and Nahida Nasreen, were sentenced to 30 years under the UAPA provisions. Women activists like Parveena Ahangar of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons have faced harassment, including raids and threats from Indian intelligence services.
The women-led organisations are the backbone of Kashmir’s resistance through documenting atrocities, caring for widows and orphans, maintaining cultural memory and demanding accountability. Their imprisonment is designed to break not just them but the social fabric they hold together.
South Africa’s silence on this violence against women is particularly damning given its position within Brics. In November 2025, at the G20 Summit in Johannesburg, President Cyril Ramaphosa assured Prime Minister Narendra Modi of South Africa’s “full support to India’s upcoming chairship of Brics in 2026”. There was no mention of Kashmir. The 18th Brics summit is scheduled for 9 to 10 September 2026, with a foreign ministers’ meeting in May 2026.
South Africa’s duality is stark. It has championed Palestinian self-determination, yet on Kashmir it has retreated into “bilateral solution” diplomacy that endorses the status quo. This is not just inconsistent but blind to reality.
The parallels between the two occupations are increasingly explicit. In April 2025, after the Pahalgam attack, prominent Indian figures openly called for an “Israel model” in Kashmir. Arnab Goswama declared “22 April is to India what 7 October was to the Israelis”. The Stop Hindu Hate Advocacy Network called for the “flattening of Kashmir”, comparing it to Gaza.
India has long been the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons and Israeli drones and surveillance technologies are deployed in Kashmir. Both occupations feature punitive home demolitions, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions and the criminalisation of dissent.
In February 2026, Modi addressed the Israeli Knesset, referring to Israel as the Fatherland to India’s Motherland. As lawyer and author Suchitra Vijayan observed, this “reflects a strategic and ideological alignment between two ethnonationalist states”.
When we condemn Israeli apartheid but remain silent on Indian occupation, we fail to recognise that these are not separate struggles but part of a shared architecture of domination — one that specifically targets women who resist.
Zeenat Adam is a former diplomat and political analyst.
When we condemn Israeli apartheid but remain silent on Indian occupation, we fail to recognise that these are not separate struggles but part of a shared architecture of domination — one that specifically targets women who resist
