Srinagar, July 04: Sometimes, an author’s creation becomes more famous than the creator. For example, you certainly know who Noddy is, but you may not know that his creator, the celebrated Enid Blyton, also wrote under the nom de plume of Mary Pollock. You may have read George Elliot’s The Mill on the Floss , but did you know the author’s real name was Mary Ann Evans? For Kashmiri separatist leader Anjuman Zamrooda Habib, however, her book has turned out to be something of a Frankenstein.
Habib, who has served five years in Tihar Jail and whose book was released last month, has talked about the beating of inmates, deaths and inhumane conditions prevalent in the prison.
Prisoner Number 100 is the English translation of her Urdu book Qaidee No 100 , released last year.
The author, however, hasn’t read her book even once after completing it. She only read it in parts when Sahiba Hussain started translating it. “ Hussain would seek clarifications about certain chapters or certain paragraphs. But after that I would remain in trauma for hours,” Habib said.
She describes every minute in Tihar “ full of humiliation”. “ If someone goes to Tihar even for a day, he should write about it,” she said.
On February 6, 2003, the Special Branch of the Delhi Police arrested Habib — then chief of the Muslim Khawteen Markaz, a constituent of the Hurriyat Conference — when she allegedly came out of the Pakistan High Commission with ` 3.07 lakh, “ meant for separatists”. Habib claims she had visited the diplomatic enclave in Chanakyapuri to collect a visa form from the Pakistan High Commission and a visa from the Royal Thai Embassy.
“ As soon as I crossed Nehru Park, my taxi was suddenly surrounded by other vehicles and I was asked to step down,” she writes.
“ Just then I saw an inspector… pulling my personal belongings out of my purse… he now had my personal dairy as well and was writing names of militant organisations in it with some figures against each… a stack of blank papers were brought to the table and I was forced to put my signature on them,” she writes.
She was later convicted under the (now repealed) Prevention of Terrorism Act (Pota). She was granted bail after she spent five years in jail as an undertrial.
Habib, a law graduate who holds a masters in education, said she was attacked in the jail by foreign inmates who were booked on drug- trafficking charges.
“ They scratched me and dug their sharp nails into my chest which began to bleed, they then pulled me by my hair but I could not do anything… my hair was dishevelled and my clothes were torn to shreds. Whenever this scene comes to my mind, it traumatises me as much today as it did then,” she writes.