Jailed separatist, Kashmir leader sworn into India parliament

NEW DELHI: A Sikh separatist and a Kashmiri politician temporarily left jail Friday to be sworn into India’s parliament after both men won resounding victories in last month’s election from behind bars.

Firebrand preacher Amritpal Singh, 31, was arrested last year after a month-long police manhunt but defeated 26 other candidates to win his seat in Punjab state.

Sheikh Abdul “Engineer” Rashid, a former state legislator in Indian-administered Kashmir arrested on terrorism funding accusations, won his constituency in the disputed Himalayan region by more than 200,000 votes.

Neither man has been convicted of the charges against him, leaving them both still eligible to sit in parliament despite their detention.

Both were briefly bailed from custody to be sworn into the legislature in New Delhi in a private ceremony that barred media access, weeks after their parliamentary colleagues took their own oaths of office. Singh’s mother told reporters that her son had been sworn in. “I now request the government to release him from jail,” she added.

Singh, 31, rose to prominence calling for a separate Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, the struggle for which sparked deadly violence in India in the 1980s and 1990s.

Weeks before his April 2023 arrest, he and armed supporters raided a police station after one of his aides was arrested for assault and attempted kidnapping.

Rashid was temporarily released from jail in Delhi for his swearing-in, which was later confirmed in a post on his Facebook page.

Ubaid Shams, Rashid’s lawyer, told AFP that his client had taken his oath of office in the presence of his wife and three children.

“He is back in prison. But he is now an official member of parliament,” he said.

Rashid was arrested in 2019 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the limited autonomy of Muslim-majority Kashmir, home to a long-running fight against Indian rule. His son ran his election campaign on his behalf, using a pressure cooker as his election symbol, seen as a representation of drastically curtailed civil liberties in the region.