‘Pied piper’ Sarjan Barkati completes 600 days in jail

Srinagar, May 19, 2018 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, the illegally detained Hurriyat leader, Sarjan Barkati, popularly known as pied piper of South Kashmir, has completed more than 600 days in jail while his distraught family desperately waits for his release. Sarjan Barkati was arrested on October 1, 2016 after earning the sobriquet of “pied piper” during 2016 mass uprising for his speeches and peculiar style of sloganeering that attracted large crowds.

His family said that he was arrested at Wanpoh area of Islamabad town and since then was behind the bars. “On May 16 he was produced before a court in Shopian and was asked to appear again on May 29. Six times his detention was quashed by court but despite that he was not released,” said Shabrooza, wife of Sarjan Barkati.

“My parents are bearing the expenses of my children. People used to come here and help but how long will we be dependent on them,” Shabrooza, who lives in a two room house with his two children, said. Her sister is also living with them to offer support. “We have no land, only a two-room old house. My husband was not earning too much money but whatever he was earning we were living a happy life with that,” she said.

Barkati’s children, Sughra, 12, a class 4th student and Azan, 7, a kindergarten student, study in a school some five kilometres from Rebban, native village of Barkati. “Today at Sehri I felt severe pain in stomach, but who would took me to hospital. In the morning I was all alone to consult a doctor in Yaripora,” Shabrooza said. She would visit her husband at Srinagar Central Jail, but after a recent escape of a prisoner, she said, authorities were not allowing them to meet him.

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