Raies Mir
Aasiya Andrabi, 64, a scholar and teacher of Islam, a prominent resistance leader, is a founding chairperson of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, the largest all-women socio-political and religious organization that advocates for Kashmir’s accession with Pakistan and liberation from Indian colonization. Her organization was helping widows and orphans of those martyred by the Indian state in the occupied territory since 1989.
She was born in 1961, graduated in Biochemistry from Women’s College, then completed her post-graduation in Arabic and Islamic Studies from University of Kashmir.
In 1983, she endured an Indian army raid inside her college premises in Srinagar. It was an attempt to curb growing student protests; students were dragged out of their classrooms and hostel rooms and beaten mercilessly, including female students. The treatment meted out to the students of her college by the Indian forces of occupation agitated Aasiya Andrabi. She climbed up to a pedestal and while addressing her fellow students questioned the Indian army’s high-handedness inside educational spaces. Thousands of students gathered around her, echoed her sentiments, and raised slogans in favor of liberation and Islam and against the human rights violations.
In the charged atmosphere, she led the protesting students from college to the central city’s Lal Chowk where more civilians joined her, emboldening her voice. She became one of the most important women Hurriyat leaders in the valley.
She married Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, known as Dr Qasim Fakhtoo, in 1990. Sentenced in a fabricated murder case by Indian agencies, Dr. Muhammad Qasim Fakthoo, a scholar, has been in jail since 1992. He has completed 36 years in jail.
Aasiya Andrabi has two sons; younger is Ahmed bin Qasim, while elder is Muhammad bin Qasim. Andrabi founded her religious beliefs on the teachings of Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith.
In pro-Pakistan and activism, Aasiya in 1982, was associated with a Madrassa ‘Talimul Quran’ for women which was later turned into Dukhtaran-e-Millat. She started inviting women to read, understand and practice their faith. She was helping poor families and education women about the Kashmir in its historical background in context with two Nations Theory and Indian occupation.
The inspiration behind formation of “Dukhtaran-e-Millat” she said is, “I was an ambitious girl. I was shocked by this objection on my wish to study outside. But in that disappointed state Mayil Khairabadi’s book ‘Khawateen ki Baatein’ came to my rescue.”
The cover story of the book was of Maryam Jameela, a Christian woman who converted to Islam after studying the religion thoroughly. For Asiya, Jameela’s story was “an eye opener” to practice Islam.
She started inviting women to read, understand and practice their faith. “This was the aim of my life now. We mobilized to bring Islam in our society,” she added. One of the campaigns of the Darsgah was to demand reserved seats for ladies in local buses while other was to remove posters of nude women across the cinema halls – before the era of massive armed struggle started in the valley. It was only after five years of the formation of her organization, the government objected. “After the elections were held in 1987, darsgahs were locked throughout the valley. When they reached us, our women resisted. I was young and full of passion to resist,” Aasiya added.
“But police raided my house and office. They told my father that I was mobilizing women against India but he retorted saying that I was just trying to bring social reform,” she recalls.
In 1985, the Ministry of Culture, New Delhi, flew a troupe of Kashmiri female dancers to Delhi, to perform in a cultural program. These dancers, from poorer sections of society, were compelled to take up this work. Aasiya and her women contemplated the situation of the dancers and organized a full-fledged movement against it. They discussed women’s exploitation and their sexualized use only for amusement in colonial government circles. Aasiya drafted her first pamphlet, ‘A Message to the Daughters of Fatima’, and distributed it among young women in various places in Srinagar. Questioning the state’s role in the exploitation of women, Fatima Zahra RA, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW), was presented as an alternative symbol of piety and womanhood as against Bollywood’s construction of women.
The Kashmiri community applauded Aasiya Andrabi and her follower for their work on the issue. The daily Aftab, a Srinagar-based newspaper, called them ‘Dukhtaran-e-Millat’ (Daughters of the Nation), a name that they happily adopted. The single Ḥalaqah branched out in every district of the Kashmir valley—women from the middle and lower classes became part of the movement. Dukhtaran organized a media cell, and Aasiya’s lectures were recorded and made available as CDs and cassettes in the local market for wider consumption.
In 1985-1986, Aasiya took the movement further by making certain demands to the government; the first was a demand for separate, reserved seats for women in public transport as they suffered daily due to men overcrowding the buses. AAasiyawho did not believe that anything could be gained by meeting ‘corrupt, pro-India politicians’ even decided to meet the then chief minister Farooq Abdullah along with fifty other women and impressed upon him the need for separate buses for women but he rejected their demand and mocked it, saying that we were living in the 20th century and Asiya, with this demand, was trying to take a regressive step which would take Kashmir back to 1400 years ago.
To this, Aasiya responded that as far as she was concerned, it would be best for humanity to return to the just Prophetic values of that era.
Aasiya Andrabi was 25 years old in 1987 when the elections were held in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. She believed strongly that the movement for liberation couldn’t be sustained through the process of sham elections and that it was a political blunder and a moral contradiction to want liberation from India on the one hand and swear by the Indian constitution, on the other.
She believed that the solution to the Kashmir issue can emerge from within the Indian apparatus and instead requires an international intervention. Aasiya supported the armed resistance against the occupation and considered it a UN-acknowledged legitimate right of the oppressed people to resist oppression by any means necessary.
In 1987, Aasiya decided to take her politics against women’s colonial exploitation to the next level. They organized a street procession of about ten thousand women and armed with brushes and black paint they blacked out posters of scantily clad movie stars. The idea was to challenge the normative and exploitative commodification of women which the Indian state promoted as progress and liberty. Everything about commodification perturbed Asiya, “to sell a single matchstick even, they use a nude woman”, she said in one of the interviews. The movement wanted to put across the point that Muslim women were not commodities and justice is against normalization of such exploitation. The government saw these protests as an expression of anti-occupation politics. Her office and home were raided, and religious books including the copies of Quran were desecrated.
In early 80’s Asiya Andrabis first big women gathering function was held in Tawheedbagh Sopore where she fully voiced for the resolution of Kashmir dispute and stressed for the safety of Islamic culture
According to Aasiya, the experience taught her the lesson that the state would not accommodate any other version of Islam except the one that grants legitimacy to the state. The state was threatened by women like Aasiya who were concerned about women’s exploitation and decided to brand her as ‘terrorists’.
It was in 1990 that the government officially banned her organization, forcing Aasiya to go underground as her house was raided almost every other day. It was around this time that Aasiya got married. Her condition was simple, her husband should be an anti-colonial activist and a practising Muslim, and so she married Dr. Muhammad Qasim Fakhtoo, a freedom fighter and a scholar. Her elder son Mohammed was born on June 13, 1992. When Mohammed was seven months old Andrabi and her husband along with the baby were arrested at the Srinagar Airport on their return from New Delhi. This is when the family of three was separated for the first time.
She was arrested for her demand of accession to Pakistan as per Two Nations Theory. She was later released in 1994, and went underground until 2004.
When the top-level ‘sex scandal’ surfaced in Jammu and Kashmir in 2005-2006, Aasiya played a leading role in exposing the nexus between the Indian army, bureaucracy, and the politicians. While demanding a thorough investigation and punishment for the culprits, she simultaneously raided many houses that were running the sex rings. She was arrested under the black law Public Safety Act during this period for ‘taking the law into her own hands’ but later she was released due to intense public protests and outrage against her arrest. The victims of the scandal themselves had chosen to turn to Aasiya instead of the police due to their usual complicity in such scandals.
Aasiya was also jailed for opening rehabilitation centers and organizing financial support for the widows and orphans of the martyrs of the cause and booked under another draconian law Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
Aasiya faced monthly arrests from 2007 to 2009. During the mass agitation and unrest in 2010, she was held for two consecutive years.
The woman leader had a major role in starting and backing-up various pro-freedom protests in the Kashmir Valley. Aasiya is believed to be one of the masterminds of the massive protests and best known for supporting Masarrat Aalam Bhat in the 2010 “Go India Go back” mass agitation across Kashmir by using her village network of Dukhtaran-e-Millat.
They also spearheaded the “Quit Jammu and Kashmir” campaign.
The year 2009 was very difficult for her as she was jailed in Jammu and her barrack was turned into a Mandir (Temple) by fellow inmates to psychologically torment her. She was jailed that year for mobilizing women against the rape of two Kashmiri women by occupation forces. She suffered severe lung disease due to the smoke of the incense during imprisonment and tear-gas during protests, as she is a patient with acute asthma and multiple respiratory ailments.
She was arrested on 28 August 2010 by Police for waging war against India. She was again arrested on 17 September 2015 in connection with a couple of cases registered against her. The cases included waving Pakistani flags and addressing, via phone, a conference in Pakistan and sang the Pakistani national anthem in Kashmir on 25 March 2015. Andrabi, who was not keeping well, as per DeM sources, was sent to Women’s Police Station, Rambagh, Srinagar. The court granted her bail, but she was rearrested again, and Kashmiris protested against her re-arrest.
Aasiya played a pivotal role in organizing anti-occupation protests in 2016, after the martyrdom of Burhan Wani. Her house has also been seized.
The chairperson of Dukhtaran-e-Millat Syeda Aasiya Andrabi and her associates, Fahmeeda Sofi and Nahida Nasreen were arrested in May 2017 and on 6 July 2018, Aasiya along with Naheda Nasreen and Fehmeeda Sofi was taken into custody by the Indian dreaded National Investigation Agency (NIA) and shifted from Srinagar jail to New Delhi thus completed 9 years in illegal detention in Tihar jail, India under draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
On March 24, 2026 as Aasiya Andrabi (64) sentenced by Delhi court to life and her two associates Fehmida Sofi (38) and Nahida Nasreen (61) were sentenced by Delhi court to 30 years in fabricated and a politically charged case under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) since May 2017, not as convicts but as undertrials, for nearly nine years before last verdict was even pronounced. They are in a jail over 800 kilometers away from their homes and families back in Kashmir. Their family is rarely able to visit Aasiya and her associates. They are allowed to call home only once in a month, for a few minutes. When relatives meet her, they are subjected to rigorous frisking and humiliation to inflict mental torture on women leaders.
Aasiya’s husband is also in a different jail and the couple have not seen or met each other over decades. Despite the court order allowing the two to have a brief monthly call, jail authorities often flout the order and deny them this right.
During her calls with her family members, she is not allowed to sit on a chair despite having acute back pain. Rs. 500 is fined if she sits on a chair.
Despite being a patient of diabetes, asthma, arthritis, and bronchospasm, 64-year women leader Aasiya is only given potatoes and starchy foods as a diet, worsening her health. She is denied proper medication for her ailments and also denied needful fruits.
Aasiya petitioned court demanding that she be allowed to possess books. Instead, the presiding judge in the court chided her for her request and told her to read her long charge-sheet instead.
Despite Tihar Jail being extremely overcrowded and Aasiya having multiple ailments that make her particularly susceptible to Covid-19, she has been denied any relief.
Her two associates Fehmeeda Sofi, (38,) requires spinal surgery. She has been denied throughout her incarceration. Fehmeeda Soif, in her thirties, was first detained under the black law Public Safety Act as a schoolgirl in Class 10, her education destroyed by repeated incarceration while Naheeda Nasreen, (61), holds postgraduate degrees in Zoology and Islamic Studies has been refused adequate medical care.
Notably, Aasiya Andrabi’s husband, Dr Ashiq Hussain Faktoo (Dr Qasim Fakhtoo), has also been imprisoned for the past three decades. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003 in a fabricated murder case, further highlighting the prolonged persecution faced by the Andrabi family.