Police Treatment of Journalists in J&K A Direct Attack on Freedom & Democracy; Extremely Distressing

Police treatment of journalists in J&K a direct attack on freedom & democracy; it's extremely distressing: Justice Rekha Sharma, former Judge Delhi High Court to Karan Thapar for The Wire.

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One of the most prominent former judges of the Delhi High Court, Justice Rekha Sharma, has said that the police treatment of journalists in the Kashmir Valley is “a direct attack on our freedom, an attack on our personal liberty … and an attack on democracy itself.” She says its “extremely extremely distressing”, adding “it’s totally without jurisdiction” and is in “disregard of the law”.



Justice Sharma was referring to the treatment of the Assistant Editor of the Express who is also the paper’s correspondent in Kashmir, Bashaarat Masood, who was summoned for four days between January 15 and 19 by the cyber police station in Srinagar and asked to sign a bond that he would not do anything to disturb the peace.



Masood is not the only journalists thus summoned by the Srinagar police. Ashiq Hussain of the Hindustan Times has also been summoned, as that paper reports. The Wire believes that perhaps one other journalist i.e. a third has also been summoned by the Srinagar police.



According to the Indian Express, Bashaarat Masood was not told why he was asked to sign the bond though anonymously an officer has told the paper it’s connected to the fact that he did a report about how the police were distributing documents requiring all mosques in the Kashmir Valley to provide details about their budget, sources of funding and personal details of people connected to the mosque such as passport, credit card and bank details.





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