When a Sentence Becomes a Lifetime: The Women of Kashmir Behind Bars

THIRTY-YEAR PRISON TERMS, REPEATED CONVICTIONS AND FRAGILE HEALTH RAISE HARD QUESTIONS ABOUT JUSTICE, TIME AND SURVIVAL.

In Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the story of women like Asiya Andrabi, So sofi  Fehmeeda and Nahida Nasreen is increasingly denied by the length of their sentences and the weight of years spent in confinement.

In January 2026, a special court under the National Investigation Agency convicted So sofi Fehmeeda and Nahida Nasreen along with others under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and related provisions of the Indian Penal Code. They were sentenced to 30 years in prison. For a woman already in middle age, such a sentence does not feel like a legal term alone. It stretches across the remaining
span of life itself.

For Asiya Andrabi, now in her sixties, multiple convictionsand long-standing cases have resulted in cumulative sentences that include three life terms in judicial records. A life sentence in legal language is meant to represent the gravest form of punishment. But when stacked across decades of detention already spent, it raises a deeper human question—what remains of a life once time itself is absorbed into imprisonment?

Inside prison walls, age does not pause. It continues quietly. Illness becomes more frequent. Mobility becomes limited. Chronic conditions require care that is often difficult to access consistently. Reports from detention settings describe diabetes, respiratory complications and physical strain among long-term detainees. In such conditions, survival itself becomes a daily negotiation.

Family life also dissolves slowly. A child grows into adulthood through brief phone calls. A spouse becomes a distant voice separated by prison schedules and administrative restrictions. Visits are rare and heavily regulated. Years pass without shared meals, without presence at home, without ordinary family life. A 30-year sentence for someone already aged is not just a legal calculation. It becomes a projection of absence. It extends beyond punishment into the natural limits of human life expectancy. This is why such sentences generate difficult ethical and humanitarian questions about proportionality,
health and dignity in detention.

At the same time, authorities maintain that these convictions are part of judicial processes under existing security laws and that courts have applied legal provisions following due procedure. This legal framework continues to operate within a region shaped by long-standing conflict and competing political narratives. Yet beyond legal arguments, there remains a human reality that cannot be ignored. Years in detention accumulate into missed decades of family life. Aging happens inside cells. Illness develops without the comfort of home. And time, once
lost, does not return.

In the end, what remains is not only a question of law, but a question of humanity—how long a life can be stretched within confinement and what justice means when measured not only in verdicts, but in the years taken from living itself.

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