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Kashmir journalist arrested in NGO terror-funding case
Mehraj, a freelance journalist residing at Mehjoor Nagar in Srinagar, was the first accused arrested following comprehensive investigations into the NGO terror funding case registered in October 2020, NIA said.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested a Kashmir-based journalist, Irfan Mehraj, in a 2020 case of terror funding allegedly through NGOs, a spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
Mehraj, a freelance journalist residing at Mehjoor Nagar in Srinagar, was the first accused arrested following comprehensive investigations into the NGO terror funding case registered in October 2020, the federal agency said. As per ground reports, he has been taken to New Delhi.
Mehraj, according to his Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles, is an editor at a non-profit media outlet and his work has been featured in various national and international publications.
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The NIA said that Mehraj was a close associate of jailed human rights activist Khurram Parvez and had been working with his organisation -- Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies (JKCCS).
The agency claimed that their investigation revealed that the JKCCS was funding terror activities and had also been propagating a secessionist agenda in the Valley under the garb of the protection of human rights.
Parvez was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in November 2021 by the NIA on charges of criminal conspiracy, waging war against the government and terror funding. His arrest had been widely condemned by global human rights bodies with UN experts calling it “an act of retaliation against a human rights defender for his tireless work documenting and reporting serious human rights violations, including enforced disappearances and unlawful killings in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir”.
The national probing agency said that involvement of some Valley-based NGOs, trusts and societies in funding of terror-related activities was being probed in this case.
“Some NGOs, both registered as well as unregistered, have been collecting funds domestically and abroad under the cover of doing charity and various welfare activities. But some of these organisations have developed links with proscribed terror organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen,” the agency said.
Mehraj’s arrest has drawn criticism from various netizens and politicians, who claimed that he was arrested for “telling the truth”.
PDP president Mehbooba Mufti in Facebook post said, “While conmen are given a free run in Kashmir, journalists like Irfan Mehraj are arrested for doing their duty by speaking the truth. Draconian laws like UAPA are abused constantly to ensure that the process itself becomes the punishment.”
A prominent journalist and executive editor of Kashmir Times, Anuradha Bhasin, said laws were being weaponised against journalists.
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Press Club of India in a statement said: “We vehemently oppose the imposing of UAPA on mediapersons. The misuse of this draconian law by NIA in randomly arresting Irfan Mehraj, a journalist from Kashmir, ominously points towards a violation of freedom of speech and expression. We demand his immediate release.”
Last year, online news magazine The Kashmir Walla’s editor Fahad Shah and trainee reporter Sajad Gul were booked under the Public Safety Act. In March, an NIA court had framed charges against Shah and a Kashmir University scholar in a sedition case in connection with the publication of an article.
