The Hindu : Police still opposing bail for Gilani

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 23, 2002

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National

Police still opposing bail for Gilani

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI OCT. 22 . Journalist Ifthikar Gilani has been in jail for four and a half months, charged with offences under the Official Secrets Act, for being in possession of information about Indian army deployment taken from a published article available in half a dozen libraries in the capital. The police is opposing his release on bail claiming he is involved in ``anti-Indian activities''.

Gilani, the New Delhi bureau chief of Kashmir Times, and stringer for a variety of foreign media, including the Pakistani newspaper Nation and German Radio, was arrested on June 9 by Delhi Police's Special Cell. He was charged with being a Pakistani agent, ``tasked to observe and report the strength and location of troops in Jammu and Kashmir''.

Mr. Gilani's arrest followed that of his father-in-law, Jamat-e-Islami leader, Syed Ali Shah Gilani. He has maintained that, he does not share his father-in-law's politics, but is being victimised for his connection to him.

His arrest was challenged in the first instance on the ground that the `incriminating document' found on his computer and which the police claimed was `secret' was published and widely circulated.

The `document' is part of an article `Indian repression in Kashmir' by Shireen Mazari published in the autumn 1996 issue of Islamabad Papers, a journal of the Institute for Strategic Studies, Islamabad.

The journal is available at, among other places, the School for International Studies, JNU, the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, New Delhi, the library of the United Services Institute of India in New Delhi. It is also accessible on the ISSI's website, www.issi.or.pk.

However, Delhi Police's Special Cell insisted on having the document assessed by Military Intelligence. MI, ignoring the fact that the information came from a published article, deemed it to be ``dangerous'' in ``enemy hands''.

The Special Cell has applied the same `rigour' in trying to establish Gilani's ``anti-Indian'' credentials. It alleged that he was a guest of the Pakistan High Commission during the Agra Summit, a claim his lawyer, has shown in court, to have no basis. It has also cited three email messages, found on Gilani's office computer to make its case.

One message is from Nusrat Javed, South Asia editor of the Pakistani paper News sent on January 17, 2002. Javed, replying to a message from Gilani asking for ``some insights behind the scene'', writes that the US is serious about a solution to Kashmir and that the two men to watch are People's Conference leader, Abdul Ghani Lone and JKLF's Yasin Malik.

Another e-mail message is from the Balwaristan National Front, listing the human rights abuses by Pakistani forces in Gilgit and Baltistan in PoK.

The third message is from Gilani to M.A. Niazi , editor of Nation, sent on July 10, 2001, discussing arrangements made for journalists by the Pakistan High Commission and the Indian government for the Agra summit.

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