There is a prominent connection with Kashmir in India, in the administration team under the 46^th President of the US, Joe Biden. In Biden administration, Sameera Fazili is an American attorney and a community development finance expert, apart from being a Deputy Director of the National Economic council. Prior to this assignment, she had worked as the Director of engagement for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Sameera Fazili is the daughter of Rafiqa Fazili and Mohammad Yusuf Fazili, both doctors, who had migrated from Kashmir. She had worked as a clinical lecturer at the Yale Law School’s community and economic development unit. She has a cousin in Kashmir, Mubin shah, who was one among those who were held under the Public Safety Act in the lockdown in Kashmir. This coincided with the scrapping of the special status of J&K in 2019.

Mubin’s mother and Sameera’s father are siblings and the family had tapped into their Washington and Delhi contacts to help secure his release.

Shah was released in December 2019, and his is a rare case in which the J-K administration withdrew the PSA.

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Fazili’s sister, Yousra Fazili, a human rights lawyer, was among the Kashmiris who testified at the November 2019 US Congressional hearing on the situation in the Valley. She spoke in detail about her cousin’s sudden arrest, his health condition, and how members of her Srinagar-based family had gone “from jail to jail in Srinagar” trying to find out where he had been taken. She said that she could not begin to describe how closely knit the entire family was.

In her testimony, Yousra added that she and Fazili had dialled friends in the State Department on learning about Shah’s arrest on August 8, 2019. And that they were only able to confirm he was imprisoned in Agra after the State Department placed an “informational request” with the Indian government on his status.

Shah, who is based in Malaysia and owns a crafts business, was arrested when visiting Kashmir along with his wife.

In October 2020, incidentally, the J&K Police had said that they were seeking to arrest Shah through Interpol over a purported Facebook post by him. J-K Director General of Police, Dilbagh Singh said that they had registered a case for the post that allegedly targeted non-local people living in the Valley. The DGP added that they (J&K police) had initiated the process to declare Shah a proclaimed offender and attach his properties in Kashmir. But there has been no movement on this.

Fazili is one of two Kashmiri-origin members in the Biden team. The other is Aisha Shah, the partnership manager at the White House Office of Digital Strategy.