Massive searches in J&K over militant threat to journalists

Srinagar: Following online threat to a few media houses in the Valley for their “traitorous” acts and “nexus with fascist Indian regime”, several journalists have resigned

BY | Saturday, 19 November, 2022
Credit: Shank19112000/Wikimedia commons

The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Saturday started massive searches at ten locations in connection with threatening of journalists by terror outfit The Resistance Front.

The searches were conducted in Srinagar, Anantnag and Kulgam districts of the Valley, police said.

“Massive searches in connection with #investigation of case related to recent #threat to journalists started by Police at 10 locations in #Srinagar, #Anantnag and #Kulgam. Details shall be followed,” Kashmir Zone Police wrote on Twitter.

The police had on November 12 filed a case against militants and handlers belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and The Resistance Front (TRF), a shadow organisation of LeT, for sending threat letters to journalists in Kashmir.

The TRF had issued an online threat to a few media houses in the Valley for their “traitorous” acts and “nexus with fascist Indian regime”.

Following the threat, several journalists resigned from local publications.

Turkey-based terror operative Mukhtar Baba and six of his contacts in Jammu and Kashmir are suspected to be behind the threats, an intelligence dossier had stated.

Baba (55) used to work for various newspapers in Kashmir. He was a resident of Srinagar in the 1990s and is believed to have escaped to Turkey, it said.

Baba, who often visits Pakistan, has emerged as a mastermind responsible for grooming youngsters in the Valley to join the TRF, the dossier said.

He is suspected to be in touch with six associates in the Valley, and two of them have been identified, it added.

Baba has built a network of informers in the journalist community and used their inputs to prepare a list of scribes to threaten, the dossier said.

The Editors Guild of India on Friday voiced “deep concern” over recent threats issued to journalists working in Kashmir by suspected terror organisations, and the subsequent resignation of five mediapersons from their respective media outlets.

“Journalists in Kashmir now find themselves in the firing line from both the state authorities as well as terrorists, in what is a throwback to the years of heightened militancy in the 1990s,” the Guild said in a statement here.

“Once again media houses have been named by terror groups warning that those associated with well-known regional papers including Rising Kashmir and Greater Kashmir will be declared “traitors” and that “their timeline is sealed”,” it said.

It said the space for media freedom and active civil society has been steadily eroding in the region.

The Guild recalled that the editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari was assassinated in June 2018.

“The Kashmir Press Club, which had become an important institution for fighting for the protection and rights of journalists, was shut down by the state administration earlier in the year, weakening the layer of peer-driven protection for the journalists,” the Guild noted.

“These pronouncements by terror organisations have further worsened the sense of fear and insecurity, which makes it impossible for the journalists to work freely,” it said.

“The Guild strongly condemns such threats and calls upon the state government to create an atmosphere of security and trust, wherein the media is not compelled to take sides, and is able to work in a free environment with full security,” the statement said.

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