A Kashmiri journalist, who was released after spending more than five years in jail earlier this week, has been rearrested by police in another case under India’s stringent “anti-terror” law, according to his lawyer.
Aasif Sultan was arrested on Thursday in a 2019 case regarding violence inside the central jail in Srinagar under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Rights activists have said getting bail under a UAPA case is nearly impossible, which means Sultan could stay in jail without trial indefinitely. Amnesty International has termed it a “lawless law.”
Laxmi Murthy, co-founder of Free Speech Collective, an organization that advocates freedom of expression, said, “The rearrest of Aasif Sultan is another example of ‘lawfare’ or the [mis]use and overuse of draconian laws to harass journalists.”
Sultan was able to secure bail in the 2018 case in April 2022, when a court said that investigation agencies had failed to establish his links with any armed group. There has been an armed rebellion in Kashmir against Indian rule since the 1980s.
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