Aasif Sultan, a former editor of Kashmir Narrator journal, has been re-arrested underneath ‘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 underneath India’s stringent “anti-terror” legislation, in accordance with his lawyer.
Aasif Sultan, 36, has been despatched to a five-day police remand after he was produced in a courtroom within the metropolis of Srinagar on Friday, Adil Abdullah Pandit, Sultan’s lawyer, advised Al Jazeera.
Pandit stated that Sultan was arrested on Thursday in a 2019 case concerning violence contained in the central jail in Srinagar underneath the Illegal Actions Prevention Act (UAPA), which worldwide rights teams have described as a “draconian” legislation. Srinagar is the biggest metropolis and summer season capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.
Rights activists have stated getting bail underneath a UAPA case is sort of inconceivable, which implies Sultan may keep in jail with out trial indefinitely.
The case is expounded to “the sections of rioting, unlawful assembly, endangering human life, attempt to murder under Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 13 of UAPA for advocating, abetting or inciting unlawful activity”, in accordance 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 outdoors Indian-administered Kashmir. Lots of of Kashmiris have been lodged in jails in different elements of India, making it troublesome 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 was grief on Thursday when Sultan was re-arrested.
“He saw his five-and-half-year-old daughter for the first time since his 2018 arrest. His daughter is asking about him and we don’t know how long this fight can be,” one in every of Sultan’s relations advised Al Jazeera on the situations of anonymity, referring to the issue in securing bail underneath the UAPA.
“He looked very weak and wanted to rest. His blood pressure was also unstable. When we asked the police, they said he was accused in another case.”
Sultan was in a position to safe bail within the 2018 case in April 2022, when a courtroom stated that investigation businesses had failed to ascertain his hyperlinks with any armed group. There was an armed riot in Kashmir towards Indian rule because the Nineteen Eighties.
However authorities instantly charged him underneath the Public Security Act (PSA), a legislation underneath which an individual may be jailed for as much as two years, with no trial. Amnesty Worldwide has termed it a “lawless law”.
Sultan’s launch on Tuesday got here greater than two months after the Jammu and Kashmir Excessive Courtroom quashed his detention order underneath the PSA.
Laxmi Murthy, co-founder of Free Speech Collective, an organisation that advocates freedom of expression, stated, “The re-arrest of Aasif Sultan is another example of ‘lawfare’ or the (mis)use and overuse of draconian laws to harass journalists.”
“Since the process is punishment, Aasif Sultan will have to spend the next 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 underneath which a number of journalists and activists have been arrested — principally underneath “anti-terror” legal guidelines such because the UAPA.