By Jehangir Ali
Srinagar: A court in Jammu has granted bail to a Kashmiri scholar nearly three years after he was arrested by J&K Police for allegedly writing a ‘seditious’ article in a Srinagar-based digital news outlet in 2011.
The court of additional sessions judge in Jammu on February 8 ordered the release of Aala Fazili, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Kashmir, who was arrested by J&K Police’s State Investigation Agency (SIA) on April 17, 2022 for the article titled “The Shackles of Slavery will Break”.
“There is very weak evidence which connects the applicant with the authorship of the article and if the applicant due to weak evidence is acquitted at the end of the trial, his period of incarceration would not be compensable by any means,” the court said.
Following the court order, Fazili was released from Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu and reached home on Tuesday evening, his brother Sami Fazili, told The Wire.
Fahad Shah
Fazili’s release comes more than 15 months after Fahad Shah, the editor of The Kashmir Walla, the Srinagar-based digital magazine which published the controversial article, was set free on bail by J&K high court after being arrested by the SIA in the case.
In its chargesheet, the SIA had alleged that the “highly provocative and seditious” write-up was “intended to create unrest” and push “gullible youth to take path of violence and create communal unrest” by “brazenly glorifying terrorism and intended to abet the commission of unlawful activities across Jammu and Kashmir”.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
