Kashmiri Journalist Asif Sultan Released From UP Prison After More Than Five Years of Incarceration

After spending over five years in detention, Kashmiri journalist Asif Sultan was finally released from the Ambedkar Nagar district jail of Uttar Pradesh. 

As per Newslaundary, Sultan was released 78 days after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court quashed the detention order against him under the Public Safety Act. The delay of over two and a half months since the quashing of the detention order, as per Ambedkar Nagar prison authorities, was due to the requirement of clearance letters from Kashmir's district magistrate and home department. 

Sultan's detention included several cases; he was first detained in a UAPA case, followed by a case under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act. At the time of his arrest in the UAPA case in September 2018, Sultan was working as a reporter with Kashmir Narrator, a Srinagar-based weekly magazine. He was arrested for "allegedly providing logistical support to a banned militant group." 

In April 2022, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court granted him bail in the case "on the grounds that the investigative agencies failed to establish his links with any militant group." 

However, this did not lead to his release from incarceration. Four days after the high court order, Sultan was booked under the Public Safety Act. His family maintained his innocence since the first arrest. As per them, he was arrested for his journalistic work, "particularly for a story titled 'The Rise of Burhan,' which he wrote for the magazine in July 2018." The story involved key details about Wani, including interviews with the overground workers of rebel groups. It allegedly angered the Kashmiri police apparatus. 

Following the reporting, Sultan's name appeared in an FIR "about a gunfight with the militants in Srinagar's Batamaloo area on August 12, 2018." Following that, Sultan was picked from his home in a midnight raid. 

However, Sultan's lawyer, Adil Abdullah Pandit, denied Sultant's presence at the site of the gunfight mentioned in the FIR. Furthermore, there was no record of Sultan providing assistance to any militant. 

There have been similar detentions of other journalists in the region. Photojournalist Kamran Yusuf was arrested by NIA in 2017. The agency accused Yusuf "of being involved in stone-throwing incidents and organising groups of youth to do so at the government forces in the region." He was released on bail in March 2018. Journalist Fahad Shah was similarly arrested and spent 658 days in detention.