Fahad Shah, the founding editor of The Kashmir Walla, an independent news outlet in Kashmir, returned home on Thursday, November 23, after spending nearly two years in jail. The J&K high court granted him bail in a terrorism case last week. Shah's arrest had sparked concerns about declining press freedoms in the region.
Shah faced accusations of publishing "anti-national content" and was arrested in February 2022 under the country's anti-terror laws. He was held under the UAPA ( Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) following a case registered by J&K's State Investigation Agency at CIJ police station in Jammu on April 4, 2022. The case was related to an article titled 'The shackles of slavery will break,' published in his magazine in 2011, written by Kashmir University scholar Abdul Aala Fazili, who was also arrested.
This wasn't Shah's first encounter with legal issues. In May 2020, he was booked for covering an encounter between militants and security forces, where he quoted locals accusing the latter of taking away their belongings. The security forces denied the charge. In January 2021, he faced another case for an article alleging that security forces pressured a private school in Shopian to organise a Republic Day function. Shah received bail in this case as well.
The high court, in its observation, noted that charging Shah with terrorism for an 11-year-old article "collides headlong with the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in Article 19 of the Constitution".
The Kashmir Walla, Shah's outlet, was banned earlier this year under the Information Technology Act.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomed Shah's release on X and urged authorities to lift the ban on The Kashmir Walla.
Apart from running The Kashmir Walla, Fahad Shah's work has been featured in international publications such as The Guardian, Time, and Foreign Policy. He was honoured with the 25th Human Rights Press Awards 2021 in explanatory feature writing for his coverage of communal violence in Delhi in February 2020.
