Srinagar Police searches 12 locations to investigate militant threats to Kashmir journalists
On Tuesday, five journalists resigned after a militant organisation put out a list of mediapersons, accusing them of being informers of security forces.
The Srinagar Police conducted raids at 12 locations across the Kashmir Valley on Saturday as part of its investigation into the threats issued to journalists earlier this week.
Five Kashmiri journalists working with local publications had resigned on Tuesday after a militant organisation put out a list of over a dozen mediapersons.
The Jammu and Kashmir Police had said that it suspected The Resistance Front, a group associated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, was behind the threats. The message was circulated in the form of posters on messaging platforms Telegram and WhatsApp.
The police had registered a first information report against The Resistance Front under provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
On Saturday, the searches were carried out “across the Valley including the houses of fugitives like Sajjad Gul, Mukhtar Baba, active terrorists of proscribed terror outfit LeT (TRF) [The Resistance Front] and other suspects in Srinagar, Anantnag and Kulgam districts”, the police said in a statement.
Mobile phones, laptops, memory cards, pen-drives & other digital devices, documents, bank papers, rubber stamps, passports, cash and currency of Saudi Arabia were among the items seized during the searches, the police added.
On Friday, the Editors Guild had expressed concerns on the matter.
“Journalists in Kashmir now find themselves in the firing line from both the state authorities as well as terrorists, in what is a throwback to the years of heightened militancy in the 1990s,” the press body had said in a statement.
