SRINAGAR: A day after his release from an Indian jail, Kashmiri journalist Asif Sultan was re-arrested in connection with an old case of unlawful activities filed by Srinagar police, in which he was listed as an accused, his family and lawyer said on Friday, March 01, 2024.
Asif Sultan was arrested hours after he was re-united with his family in his home in Batmaloo area of Srinagar city, where he reached after his release from Ambedkar Nagar jail in central Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. He was lodged there in preventive detention under Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA) since 2022.
Local news gathering agencies in Srinagar reported that Sultan was summoned by Rainawari police station on Thursday, February 29 evening and re-arrested. The news of his re-arrested by the Rainawari police has shocked his family, who were hoping that his ordeal of more than five years had come to an end, according to news reports quoting his family.
Sultan seen waving to his relatives from the police vehicle outside a Srinagar court [File: Saqib Majeed/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]
According to reports, some Kashmiri detainees, who are set free by the courts, have to reportedly get clearances from the J&K administration before they can walk out of jails. The Telegraph reported, quoting sources, that this has become necessary after an amendment to the Public Safety Act.
Asif Sultan was remanded to five-day police custody when he was produced in a Srinagar court on Friday. The case will come up for hearing on March 6, according to Adil Abdullah Pandit, his lawyer is reported to said.
His counsel said that Asif was arrested by Srinagar police in a case FIR No: 19/2019, which was filed in Rainawari police station under Sections 147 and 148 (rioting and punishment for rioting), 149 (offence committed by any member of unlawful assembly), 336 (endangering human life) and 307 (attempt to murder) of Indian Penal Code, besides Section 13 (advocating, abetting or inciting unlawful activity) of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
Pandit said that the case related to the 2019 incident of rioting in Central Jail in Srinagar, wherein the inmates had allegedly ransacked the barracks after some argument with the prison staff which later turned violent. Inmates had alleged that the desecration of the Holy Quran led to the flare-up, a charge denied by the jail administration.
“At that time, Asif was lodged in the same jail under FIR No: 73/2018, in which he has already been granted bail by the court,” Pandit said.
The FIR No: 73/2018 at Batamaloo police station in Srinagar, in which Sultan was accused of harbouring terrorists at his residence in 2018, marked the beginning of the entire episode. The police booked him under Sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and some sections of the Ranbir Penal Code (now Indian Penal Code) and he was later arrested.
At the time of his arrest, he was working with the now defunct, Srinagar-based monthly English magazine Kashmir Narrator.
About three years later, a court in Srinagar granted him bail in the case on April 5, 2022, citing the failure of the investigators to provide sufficient evidence that linked Sultan to any militant group while ordering his release.
Before he could walk out of jail, Srinagar district authorities invoked the controversial Public Safety Act against Sultan, while accusing him of “harnessing known militants”, “criminal conspiracy” and “aiding and participating in militant activities”. PSA provides for detention of any person in J&K without any trial.
He was taken into preventive detention under the PSA and later transferred to Ambedkar Nagar jail in Uttar Pradesh.
The PSA dossier surprisingly accused Sultan of being an “Over-Ground Worker (OGW) of Hizbul Mujahideen” who, while in jail, joined Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an Al-Qaida affiliate.
The dossier also claimed that Sultan was an OGW of The Resistance Front, a militant group, which was formed months after Sultan’s arrest in 2018 and which authorities believe is an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba terror outfit.
Sultan’s detention under the controversial PSA was quashed by J&K High Court in December last year, which termed the allegations against him as “unsustainable” and urged the authorities to release him from detention.
“It is unambiguously clear and evident from the perusal of receipt of grounds of detention and other relevant record that only five leaves have been given to detenu,” Justice V C Koul observed in his judgment.
The court also pointed out that the detaining authorities in Kashmir did not provide Asif Sultan with the copies of the FIR, witness statements or other investigation material of the case, which formed the basis for his preventive detention under the PSA.
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