Aasif Sultan, a former editor of Kashmir Narrator journal, has been re-arrested beneath ‘anti-terror’ legislation days, two days after his launch following 5 years in jail.
A Kashmiri journalist, who was launched after spending greater than 5 years in jail earlier this week, has been re-arrested by police in one other case beneath India’s stringent “anti-terror” legislation, in line with his lawyer.
Aasif Sultan, 36, has been despatched to a five-day police remand after he was produced in a court docket within the metropolis of Srinagar on Friday, Adil Abdullah Pandit, Sultan’s lawyer, instructed Al Jazeera.
Pandit mentioned that Sultan was arrested on Thursday in a 2019 case concerning violence contained in the central jail in Srinagar beneath the Illegal Actions Prevention Act (UAPA), which worldwide rights teams have described as a “draconian” legislation. Srinagar is the most important metropolis and summer season capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.
Rights activists have mentioned getting bail beneath a UAPA case is almost unattainable, which implies Sultan might keep in jail with out trial indefinitely.
The case is said to “the sections of rioting, illegal meeting, endangering human life, try and homicide beneath Indian Penal Code (IPC) and part 13 of UAPA for advocating, abetting or inciting illegal exercise”, in line with the lawyer.
On the time of the violence, Sultan was already lodged in jail. The riots contained in the jail had erupted over a transfer by authorities to shift prisoners to jails exterior Indian-administered Kashmir. A whole bunch of Kashmiris have been lodged in jails in different components of India, making it tough for households to fulfill their relations.
‘Harbouring militants’
Sultan labored as an assistant editor for a Srinagar-based English journal, Kashmir Narrator, which is now defunct, when he was arrested in September 2018 on allegations of “harbouring militants”.
His household has denied the allegations, saying he was being focused for his work as a journalist.
On February 27 he was launched from a jail within the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh about 1,400km (870 miles) away.
However the temporary pleasure for his household in Batamaloo locality in Srinagar become grief on Thursday when Sultan was re-arrested.
“He noticed his five-and-half-year-old daughter for the primary time since his 2018 arrest. His daughter is asking about him and we don’t know the way lengthy this combat will be,” considered one of Sultan’s relations instructed Al Jazeera on the circumstances of anonymity, referring to the problem in securing bail beneath the UAPA.
“He regarded very weak and needed to relaxation. His blood strain was additionally unstable. Once we requested the police, they mentioned he was accused in one other case.”
Sultan was capable of safe bail within the 2018 case in April 2022, when a court docket mentioned that investigation businesses had failed to determine his hyperlinks with any armed group. There was an armed rise up in Kashmir towards Indian rule for the reason that Eighties.
However authorities instantly charged him beneath the Public Security Act (PSA), a legislation beneath which an individual will be jailed for as much as two years, with out a trial. Amnesty Worldwide has termed it a “lawless legislation”.
Sultan’s launch on Tuesday got here greater than two months after the Jammu and Kashmir Excessive Courtroom quashed his detention order beneath the PSA.
Laxmi Murthy, co-founder of Free Speech Collective, an organisation that advocates freedom of expression, mentioned, “The re-arrest of Aasif Sultan is one other instance of ‘lawfare’ or the (mis)use and overuse of draconian legal guidelines to harass journalists.”
“For the reason that course of is punishment, Aasif Sultan must spend the subsequent few years of his life proving his innocence.”
Since India scrapped Kashmir’s particular standing in 2019 and imposed central rule, authorities have cracked down on free speech beneath which a number of journalists and activists have been arrested — largely beneath “anti-terror” legal guidelines such because the UAPA.