By Jehangir Ali
Punching holes in the police chargesheet, the Jammu and Kashmir high court has struck down the terror funding charge against Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah while linking the ‘seditious’ article in his media outlet to the fundamental right to freedom of speech.
The court granted bail to Shah on November 17, nearly two years after he was first arrested by J&K Police on terrorism charges.
Hearing his bail application, a division bench of the high court observed that invoking charges of terrorism against Shah for an 11-year-old article “collide(s) head long with the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in Article 19 of the Constitution.”
‘The shackles of slavery will break’, the controversial article authored by Aala Fazili, a University of Kashmir scholar, appeared in The Kashmir Walla outlet, which was founded by Shah, in 2011.
Both Aala and Shah were arrested last year in the anti-terror case which was filed in Jammu CIJ police station by J&K Police’s State Investigation Agency (SIA). Shah’s bail application was earlier rejected by a lower court.
The SIA has accused the two of glorifying terrorism, terror conspiracy and waging war against the country besides a slew of other charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) and Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA).
The prosecution had invoked Section 43-D (5) of the UAPA to oppose Shah’s bail application. Under this section, a court cannot grant bail to a UAPA suspect without hearing the prosecution.
Opposing the bail application, the prosecution pleaded that the controversial article in The Kashmir Walla was a ‘terrorist attack’ defined in section 15 (1) (a) (ii) of the UAPA. The prosecution claimed that the article had attacked the “honour, dignity and fair name” of India which was her “incorporeal” property under section 2 (h) of the UAPA.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here .