Onlykashmir News Desk
Journalist Fahad Shah, who was granted bail in a terrorism-related case by the J&K High Court last week, returned home on Thursday, November 23, after spending nearly two years in jail.
Since his arrest on February 4, 2022, for a report on an encounter in Pulwama, Mr. Shah has been arrested in four other cases. He has been granted bail in a total of four cases by separate courts.
In October last year, Mr. Shah was booked under the UAPA in a “narrative terrorism” case for a write-up published 12 years ago, which the police alleged was aimed at “spreading terrorism and creating a false narrative”.
A division bench of the high court observed that invoking charges of terrorism against Shah for an 11-year-old article “collide(s) head long with the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in Article 19 of the Constitution.”
“Fahad Shah, the journalist who spent 21 months in jail, has now returned home today. I had the privilege to meet him at his residence. It’s truly uplifting to see him back with his family after such a challenging period,” writes an anchor of the local news gathering agency Kashmir News Bureau, Imran Naikoo on his Facebook profile.
Pertinently, Sajad Gul, who worked briefly as a trainee reporter at Fahad Shah’s founded magazine Kashmir Wallah, was also released last week. Gul, arrested in January 2022, was jailed under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in Uttar Pradesh.
