Kashmiri journalist and The Kashmir Walla editor Fahad Shah walked out of the jail today after nearly two years of incarceration – a week after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court granted him bail in a case involving a purported “seditious” article he wrote 13 years ago.
Shah was arrested in February 2022, and booked for a series of terror charges under the UAPA and the Public Safety Act. While the Kashmiri journalist was granted bail in two cases in April this year – with the high court stating that his detention “did not sustain the test of law” – he had continued to remain in jail in the UAPA case.
Speaking to The Wire from his home in Srinagar, Shah said: “It feels good to be back home. It feels different to be with your family and friends. I have been through a lot in these long years which has changed me at multiple levels. My health has declined but my spirits are high.”
Now, Shah will still face trial under Section 13 of the UAPA for reportedly abetting unlawful activities and Sections 35 and 39 of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010.
Days before Shah’s release, the J&K high court also granted bail to journalist Sajad Gul alias Sajad Ahmad Dur, a trainee reporter with The Kashmir Walla.
Gul had been arrested in January 2022, and charged under the Public Safety Act – similar to Shah – for posting an alleged “video of family members and relatives raising anti-India slogans after the killing of their kin, a militant, in a gunfight in Srinagar”.
While pronouncing its decree in Gul’s case, the high court had heavily come down on the state authorities and stated that his arrest was part of a “tendency” by authorities to “detain the critics of the policies...of the government machinery” which is an “abuse of the preventive law”.
Meanwhile, in August this year, the government had blocked The Kashmir Walla’s website and social media under the IT Act, 2000. Their Facebook and Twitter pages were withheld too. Earlier this year, the NIA had probed the website’s subscription model for “anti-India links”.
Newslaundry had earlier reported that Shah’s arrest revealed a pattern of Kashmiri journalists being targeted by the government. The chargesheet filed against him had stated the power of writing, narration and poems to propagate agenda, and the significance of an editor’s role as premise for his arrest. Read all about it here.
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