By Jehangir Ali / The Wire

Srinagar: A year-long investigation by the BBC into the state of journalism in Kashmir has ruffled feathers with the J&K Police warning of legal action against the London-based international media group.

Taking umbrage at a BBC report titled ‘Any story could be your last’ – India’s crackdown on Kashmir press’ that lists out a “sinister and systematic campaign to intimidate and silence the press” in the Valley, J&K Police said the report “unfairly castigates law and order efforts” as “biased against journalists.”

An official spokesperson of J&K Police said on X, formerly Twitter, that the State Investigation Agency (SIA), the elite counter-militancy agency of J&K, “reserves the right to initiate further legal action” against the BBC for “misreporting facts in a case which is sub judice.”

Upon enquiry, a BBC spokesperson told The Wire, “We would simply say that the BBC stands by its journalism.”

The case relates to the incarceration of Fahad Shah, a Srinagar-based journalist, for publishing a “seditious” article authored by a University of Kashmir scholar, in his online media outlet, The Kashmir Walla (TKW).

The Srinagar-based digital media house shut down last month after the government of India’s information technology ministry took down its website and social media accounts under a law which has been criticised by the free speech activists.

“Fahad Shah, who edited a digital magazine, was arrested under anti-terror laws in February 2022, accused of ‘propagating terror’,” the BBC said in its report, the only reference to Shah in the 2165-word piece.

The J&K Police didn’t clarify what it meant by “misreporting of facts” by the BBC which has only restated the charges framed against Shah by J&K Police.

Shah has been booked in four anti-terror cases and the Public Safety Act. While he has got bail in at least three cases, he was booked by the SIA on April 4, 2022 (FIR number 01/2022), nearly 11 years after his digital magazine hosted the “seditious” article titled “The shackles of slavery will break”.

The article was authored by Aala Fazili, a research scholar at the University of Kashmir’s Pharmaceutical Department, who has also been arrested in the case.

The SIA filed a chargesheet in the case against Shah and Fazili in March this year. Shah has been booked under sections 35 (accepting foreign contribution in contravention of provisions of FCRA) and 39 (violation of FCRA) of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010 in the case with police alleging that his digital magazine’s subscription model could be used to ‘foment trouble’.

If convicted in these four cases, Shah, who has been accused of publishing “news against government policies” and “having radical ideology right from your childhood”, faces different sentences which can extend to life imprisonment.

The BBC report, which was shared widely on social media, also refers to the arrests of Aasif Sultan, a Srinagar-based journalist with a local English magazine (now closed), Sajad Gul, a TKW trainee reporter from north Kashmir, and Irfan Mehraj, another Srinagar-based journalist, who have been booked under the anti-terror law by J&K Police.

This story was originally published in thewire.in . Read the full story here