Kashmiri journalist, released after five-year detention, arrested hours later

His arrest in 2018 under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) had attracted international condemnation and several international press freedom organisations had called for his release. He was also honoured with the annual John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award by the National Press Club of America.

Family sources said Sultan, who was lodged in Srinagar Central jail till April 2022, was moved to a jail in Uttar Pradesh under the Public Safety Act (PSA).

They said that when he returned home on Thursday, he received a call from the police asking him to report to the local police station where he was detained again.

While the J&K police have not made any statement over the development, official sources said Sultan has been arrested in a 2019 case registered at the Rainawari police station over an agitation of inmates inside the Srinagar Central Jail. The jail inmates were protesting against shifting of some prisoners outside the state and allegedly set some furniture on fire.

On December 7 last year, the J&K High Court had quashed Sultan’s detention under PSA calling it “illegal and unsustainable”.

“If detenu is not supplied the material on which the detention order is based, he will not be in a position to make an effective representation against his detention order,” Justice Vinod Chatterji Koul of the High Court said while quashing the PSA against Sultan. “The failure on the part of the detaining authority to supply the material, relied at the time of making the detention order to the detenu, renders the detention order illegal and unsustainable,” said the court.

However, Sultan continued to be in the UP prison for more than two months. The police have not cited any reason yet for the delay in his release.

A journalist with a Srinagar-based English magazine, Kashmir Narrator, Sultan was working as an assistant editor when he was arrested by the J&K police in September 2018 under UAPA after his story on slain militant commander Burhan Wani was published in the magazine. His colleagues and family claimed that he was arrested for his journalistic work. The police, in their chargesheet, however accused Sultan of “hatching a criminal conspiracy” and “harbouring militants”.

The police chargesheet was filed in a case of a gunfight in which a policeman was killed by militants in Srinagar’s Batamaloo neighbourhood. The militants had managed to escape after the gunfight.

In April 2022, a Special NIA court granted bail to Sultan in the UAPA case on the grounds that “investigative agencies failed to establish his links with any militant group”.

“It has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt that the applicant/accused was involved in the commission of offences as alleged in the chargesheet. There is neither any direct evidence nor any substantial evidence on record which would have connected the accused/applicant herein with the alleged crime,” the special court said in its bail order.

However, the police booked Sultan again under PSA, which allows the government to detain any person without trial for a period of up to two years.