Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti. (File)
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday said she has requested Home Minister Rajnath Singh to intervene in Kamran Yousuf’s case “so that the life of a budding journalist does not get ruined.” Kamran Yousuf, a photojournalist in Kashmir was arrested by the National Investigative Agency (NIA) in September for alleged terror funding and stone pelting. He has been booked under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act along with 11 others.
“Spoke to Home Minister @rajnathsingh ji to look into Kamran Yousuf’s case. I’ve requested him to intervene so that the life of a young budding journalist does not get ruined,” Mehbooa Mufti wrote on Twitter. Last month, PDP youth president Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra had written to the Chief Minister asking her to consider general amnesty for Yousuf. “This will indeed be a very positive gesture and a confidence-building measure that most Kashmiris will acknowledge, appreciate and remember,” he said after meeting Kamran’s family.
While the NIA alleges that Yousuf was a stone-pelter and that his work as a photojournalist was a front to “cover up his actual subversive activities”, the defence has argued that the people Yousuf was in touch with are journalists and also a senior police officer. The case is being heard before Additional Sessions Judge Tarun Sherawat. There have been more than 18 hearings on the bail plea in the past six months, but it is not clear when it will be decided.
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Kamran Yousuf was arrested on charges of terror funding and stone pelting.
Kashmir Editors’ Guild has also sought immediate release of Kamran Yousuf adding that NIA’s efforts of listing the “moral duty of a journalist” and “redefining” journalism is “seen as an effort by totalitarian and dictatorial regimes and not democracies”. In its chargesheet filed on January 18 against 12 people, including Yousuf, in connection with terror funding and stone-pelting in the Valley, the NIA observed: “Had he been a real journalist/stringer by profession, he may have performed one of the moral duty of a journalist which is to cover the activities and happening (good or bad) in his jurisdiction. He had never covered any developmental activity of any Government Department/Agency.”
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