SRINAGAR: Jailed separatist leader Altaf Ahmad Shah passed away at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi early on Tuesday early morning.
In a tweet, Shah’s daughter Ruwa Shah confirmed the death. “Abu (father) breathed his last at AIIMS, New Delhi. As a prisoner,” Ruwa Shah tweeted.
Son-in-law of late Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Geelani, Shah was arrested by the NIA in 2018, along with several other separatist leaders, in an alleged terror funding case and was lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail.
Diagnosed with renal cancer, Shah was shifted to Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital where he remained on a ventilator. When the family appealed to the court that the hospital lacks cancer treatment systems, he was ordered to be shifted to AIIMS on October 1. The court permitted his son and daughter to be with their father for hour daily.
Shah, 66, lived in Soura area of Srinagar and was the son-in-law and associate of Syed Ali Geelani and was one of his close associates. He is survived by wife, son and daughter.
