SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir Police have registered an FIR against The Resistance Front (TRF) for “threatening” journalists by putting out a list of over a dozen scribes, accusing them of working for government agencies.
An FIR No. 82/2022 under sections 13 of UAPA, 505, 153B, 124A & 506 of the Indian Penal Code was lodged at Shergari Police Station.
Reports in the media revealed that five journalists working with local news organisations have resigned so far after their names surfaced in the list.
“Case registered against handlers, active terrorists & OGWs of terror outfit LeT & its offshoot TRF for online publication & dissemination of a direct threat letter to journalists & reporters based in Kashmir. FIR No. 82/2022 U/S 13 UAPA, 505, 153B, 124A & 506 IPC in Shergari PS,” a Jammu and Kashmir police tweet reads.
“The Resistance Front (TRF) which is an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Toiba is behind these threats,” the police said.
Meanwhile, media reports quoting “intelligence communiques” stated that the threats issued to these journalists have a Turkey link.
Following this, The Editors Guild of India Friday issued a statement stating that they are “deeply concerned about the recent threats issued to journalists working in Kashmir, by alleged terror organisations, and the subsequent resignations of five of the journalists from their respective media outlets.”
“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. Once again media houses have been named by terror groups warning that those associated with well-known regional papers…will be declared ‘traitors’ and that ‘their timeline is sealed’,” the EGI statement reads.
“Space for media freedom and active civil society has been steadily eroding in the region. It must be recalled that the editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari was assassinated in June 2018. The Kashmir Press Club, which had become an important institution for fighting for the protection and rights of journalists, was shut down by the state administration earlier in the year, weakening the layer of peer-driven protection for the journalists,” the statement further reads.
