A student at Kashmir University, studying doctoral pharmaceutical sciences scheduled to get married in a fortnight was arrested under UAPA.
Aala Fazili was a Kashmiri scholar who came to the limelight during the 2016 street protests when he participated in several television programs condemning the use of force on civilian protesters. He was called for questioning by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) five years ago.
Aala Fazili was scheduled to get married in a fortnight. He was a recipient of the UGC Maulana Azad National Fellowship for five years till March 2021 and was to get married after Eid. His sister was doing his wedding shopping in Delhi, as she was yet to select his wedding clothes when she was informed he had been arrested under the UAPA.
The Jammu and Kashmir Police’s recently created State Investigation Agency (SIA) and on Sunday arrested the Ph.D. student under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Aala Fazili had been arrested for an article written by him that was published in an online news magazine 11 years ago.
“The article titled ‘The shackles of slavery will break’ … on the one hand is highly provocative, seditious, and intended to create unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, written with the purpose of abetting the youth to take the path of violence by glorifying terrorism, and on the other, the write-up prompted and propagated the false narrative, which is essential to sustain secessionist cum terrorist campaign aimed at breaking the territorial integrity of India,” the SIA said in a statement.
It said the article published on November 6, 2011, in the online magazine The Kashmir Walla was “highly provocative, seditious and intended to create unrest in Jammu and Kashmir”.
Officers of the SIA raided the residences of Ph.D. student Abdul Aala Fazili and Fahad Shah, the editor of The Kashmir Walla who is already in jail, and the magazine’s office premises and conducted intensive searches. The searches were in connection with a First Information Report registered against Fazili, Shah, and other associates for the “seditious” article, the SIA said.
Fahad Shah was arrested on March 14 under the Public Safety Act after he was bailed out twice earlier by the courts. He was arrested on February 4 for a report on his website on a gunfight in South Kashmir which cited family members saying their son who was killed in the gunfight was not a militant. While he was bailed out by the court, he was re-arrested following an FIR registered against him in Shopian for another report in the magazine. When he received bail the second time, the police booked him under PSA.
A Kashmiri shared ” Same thing happened with my brother. He was picked two weeks before his wedding date. We pleaded with the police to release him at least until his marriage. They refused.
We called off the marriage 5 days before. Later police released him one day before the previously scheduled date but now of no use. My father paid 200000 ransom. It was painful to see how they first refused to release him and later released him when we had already canceled the marriage. Kashmir police do it deliberately to make us feel helpless and break us emotionally. They are the most brutal force on Earth!
Arrested Kashmiri scholar Aala Fazili shifted to JIC Jammu under UAPA. He had to get married after Eid. His sister was doing his wedding shopping in Delhi, as she was yet to select his weeding dress, she was informed, he has been arrested. Same thing happened with my brother 1/3
— Kaakh (Mureed e Geelani) (@FootSoldier1931) April 19, 2022
Kashmiris are feeling helpless in the strings of arrests made against them under words like “seditious” and voice that the security forces are doing this to “break them” for there are no terroristic activities going on with them, but are simply expressing their feelings as one can see, he was arrested for a 2011 article!
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