J&K photographer says she was stopped at IGI from boarding flight to France

MUMBAI: A Pulitzer winning photojournalist from Kashmir, Sanna Mattoo, was reportedly stopped by immigration authorities in Delhi on Saturday from boarding a flight to Paris.
She tweeted an image of her boarding pass and a page on her passport stamped 'Cancelled without prejudice'. Mattoo told TOI that she had a valid passport and a visa for France. "The immigration officers refused to give me a proper reason for denying me boarding. When I pressed on, all they said was that they were acting on instructions received from the SSP CID headquarters inKashmir. I called the CID office in Kashmir and was told that my visa and passport were all in order. Then why am I being stopped? It's not that I have any police records or an FIR against me," said the Srinagar resident, who was among the four photojournalists from India who received the Pulitzer prize in feature photography this year for their coverage of the Covid crisis in India.

Meanwhile, Kashmir police officials were not available for comment.
Mattoo was among the 10 photographers from South Asia who had received the Serendipity Arles Grant in 2020 and was headed to Paris for a book launch and photography exhibition. Mattoo's project was about juvenile detention in Kashmir.
Asked if she had a hunch about why she might have been stopped from travelling, she said, "If there was something wrong with me then I wouldn't have had a passport or a visa. Most of my work is Kashmir-based and any work in Kashmir will always have a political angle but how can that stop me from travelling?"