NIA court denies bail to Abdul Fazili, Fahad Shah

Both were arrested under UAPA

Fahad Shah.

Fahad Shah, 33, journalist and editor of the Kashmir Walla portal, and Abdul Aala Fazili, 39, a research scholar at Kashmir University (KU), were denied bail by a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Jammu on Friday.

Both Shah and Fazili, arrested earlier this year, are facing charges under several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

“A special judge of the NIA, Jammu, has dismissed the bail application of Shah and Fazili,” the Special Investigation Agency (SIA) said.

According to the SIA, they were involved in unlawful activities “to propagate the false narrative of the secessionist as well as the terrorist to disintegrate the sovereignty and unity of Union of India and to motivate the Kashmiri youth to exhilarate the subversive activities against the popular government”.

The SIA is the investigating agency in the FIR No. 01/2022 lodged under sections 13, 18 of UAPA and 120B, 121, 124, 153B of Indian Penal Code (IPC).

“Fazili has written an article ‘The Shackles of Slavery will Break’ and published it in the monthly magazine The Kashmir Wala as a part of the ongoing strategy to build and propagate the false narrative against Union of India to disruption of the territorial integrity by seceding the Jammu and Kashmir and annexing it with Pakistan. The write-up is highly provocative, seditious and intended to create unrest in Jammu and Kashmir to abet the gullible youth to take the path of violence and create communal unrest,” the SIA said.

The article by Fazili, who is a PhD scholar in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Kashmir University, was published on November 6, 2011. 

Shah was arrested on February 4 by the Pulwama police for a report on an encounter in south Kashmir and was granted bail by the local courts twice on February 26 and March 5. However, he was arrested immediately after two separate First Information Reports (FIRs) were lodged in Shopian and Srinagar. After facing arrests in different cases, Shah was booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA), under which a person can be detained without a trial for up to six months, in March this year.