Journalist Fahad Shah was arrested again by the Shopian Police in Jammu and Kashmir in a separate case on Saturday evening, hours after getting bail by a local court, reported The Kashmir Walla.
Shah is the editor-in-chief of news portal The Kashmir Walla.
The journalist was earlier arrested on February 4 for posting allegedly anti-national content on social media. He was granted bail after 22 days by a National Investigation Agency court.
In a statement on Sunday, The Kashmir Walla said that Shah is now lodged at the ImamSahib police station on charges under Sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code.
The news portal said that the Shah cooperated when his custody was being handed over to the Shopian Police.
“The Kashmir Walla team continues to stand strongly behind Shah and his family in this time of distress and we reiterate our appeal to Manoj Sinha-led Jammu and Kashmir administration for the immediate release of Shah,” the statement said. “We hope he joins us back in the newsroom soon.”
A day after Shah was arrested, the Jammu and Kashmir Police had said that the journalist has been named in three first information reports. They had said that he is wanted for “glorifying terrorism, spreading fake news and inciting general public for creating law and order situation”.
Shah has been arrested again in connection with one of these FIRs lodged at the Imamsahib police station in Shopian district.
In the Pulwama first information report for which he was arrested on February 4, Shah is being investigated for alleged sedition and making statements causing public mischief and of unlawful activities under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
On February 6, several press bodies, including the Editors Guild, had demanded that that Shah be released immediately. The Editors Guild had asked the authorities in the Union Territory to ensure that FIRs, intimidatory questioning, and wrongful detainment was not used as tools for suppressing press freedom.
In 2020, the police had summoned Shah twice – once on May 20 and again on July 10 – in connection with The Kashmir Walla’s coverage of a gunfight in the Nawakadal neighbourhood of downtown Srinagar on May 19.
Arrest of another ‘The Kashmir Walla’ journalist
Sajad Gul, who is also a journalist at The Kashmir Walla, was arrested and booked under criminal conspiracy and other charges on January 5 after he posted a video of a family shouting anti-India slogans after their kin was killed in a gunfight in Srinagar.
Gul was later detained under the Public Safety Act, a preventive detention law, on January 16, a day after a court had given him bail in a criminal conspiracy case.
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