Sehrish Sami, sister of the Kashmiri man, Jahanzaib Sami Wani who has been arrested by Delhi police along with his wife, Hina Bashir Beig, for having links with Islamic State has rubbished charges against him and said he moved to Delhi due to lockdown and internet blockade in Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.
Sehrish said her brother is an IT professional and was working for a UK based company in Srinagar. She said he joined the company in June last year.
She said her brother had shifted to Delhi temporarily in September last year at the behest of the company due to the continued internet shutdown in Kashmir.
She said the company had arranged accommodation for him at Okhla.
She said after getting married on October 6, her brother and his wife moved into a rented flat in Delhi on October 26.
“Now he was all set to return home as the internet has been restored in Kashmir,” Sehrish told THE WEEK. “Last time I spoke to him, he said they will home soon.”
She said her father Abdul Sami, a businessman, and her sister-in law’s father have reached Delhi to arrange legal help for her brother and his wife.
She said they were informed about her brother and sister in law’s arrest by one of Jahanzaib’s friends who was contacted by the landlord.
“ I then spoke to one of the cousin's in Delhi and asked him to find out what had happened,’’ she said.” Sehrish said the police have also levelled charges against her sister-in-law, who had told police she accompanied her husband to the police station.”
She said charges against her brother are made-up and he had shifted to Delhi due to internet blockade in Kashmir.
Jahanzaib went to one of Kashmir’s best schools Burn Hall and Tyndale Biscoe and then studied electronics and communication at Ferozpure in Punjab. He did his MBA in IT from Bengaluru.
“ He worked in Bengaluru for some time and then returned home and started his own IT start-up Walursol which shut down due to 2016 uprising,” Sehrish said. “He then took a job in Pune for some time but he always wanted to come back and settle in Kashmir.”
His wife Beig has bachelors in IT and master in business administration.
Delhi police’s special cell on March 8, claimed they had detained a Kashmiri living in a rented flat in Jamia Nagar for links with the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province
It said the couple were involved in inciting protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and owned objectionable material.
