India releases Kashmir activist, journalist on bail: relatives

NEW DELHI: Authorities in New Delhi have released a human rights activist and a journalist on bail years after their arrests in Kashmir on “terrorism” charges, their families said Thursday.

Khurram Parvez, programme coordinator for the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), was arrested in 2021 by India’s National Investigation Agency from his home in Srinagar city.

Irfan Mehraj, a freelance journalist who was also associated with the same rights group, was arrested in 2023.

They both face charges of “funding terrorism” and “propagation of secessionist agenda” under India’s stringent anti-terror laws that allow authorities to hold people without trial indefinitely.

Parvez and Mehraj were released from a New Delhi prison late Wednesday, their relatives told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Conditions of their bail — which was appealed by the National Investigation Agency but upheld by a higher court — mean their freedom is severely limited.

They have to arrange for their stay in the capital, where they are facing trial, and cannot travel to Kashmir, according to a court document seen by AFP.

JKCCS has for decades exposed rights violations by Indian government forces, including torture and unlawful killings.

The group has also been vocal about thousands of unmarked graves in border areas suspected of holding remains of some of the victims of “enforced disappearances” in the disputed region.

Rights groups across the world have called for Parvez’s release.

In 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said his arrest was an “act of reprisal for his human rights work, and an attempt to silence him and Kashmiri civil society as a whole”.

Several journalists in Kashmir say they have been subject to harassment and arrests since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government annulled the region’s partial autonomy in 2019.

Between 2019 and 2023, more than 3,600 people have been arrested there under anti-terror laws, with more than half of them still in prison, according to government figures.