NEW YORK: The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday expressed alarm over the re-arrest of Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan two days after he was freed from more than five years of arbitrary detention and called on Indian authorities to immediately cease harassing him in retaliation for his work.
On February 27, Sultan was released from jail in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and on February 29 he reached his home in occupied Srinagar, according to multiple news reports and a local journalist familiar with the case, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.
When Sultan responded later that day to a summons to appear at Srinagar’s Rainawari police station for questioning on a separate matter, he was re-arrested, those sources said, in addition to Sultan’s lawyer Adil Pandit, who spoke to CPJ.
On March 1, Sultan was presented at a local court in Srinagar, which ordered that he remain in police custody pending investigation until March 5, Pandit said, adding that he was applying for bail on behalf of his client.
Sultan, an assistant editor and reporter with the defunct monthly magazine Kashmir Narrator, was first arrested in occupied Srinagar in August 2018 and accused of “harbouring known militants” in a case marred by procedural delays and evidentiary irregularities. The previous month, Sultan published a cover story on slain Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani. CPJ and its partner organizations repeatedly called for Sultan’s release.
“The re-arrest of Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan on old charges, days after his release from five and a half years of arbitrary detention, raises concern that he has again been targeted because of his journalism,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “We call on the Indian government to immediately end its media crackdown in Kashmir and to ensure that Sultan and other Kashmiri journalists do not spend another day behind bars for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression.”
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