On Saturday, photojournalist from Jammu and Kashmir, Masrat Zahra, was charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for allegedly uploading posts that glorify “anti-national activities” on social media, the police said.
UAPA allows the government to proscribe individuals as terrorists and empowers more officers of the National Investigation Agency to probe cases. A person charged under the act can be jailed for up to seven years.
The police said that Masrat Zahra, a freelance photojournalist who reports mostly about women and children in conflict, uploaded photographs that could “provoke the public to disturb law and order”.
“The user [Zahra] is also uploading posts that tantamount to glorify the anti-national activities and dent the image of law enforcing agencies besides causing disaffection against the country,” the police said in a press release.
The police added that Zahra’s social media posts are inciting young people and promoting unrest. “The user is uploading anti-national posts with criminal intention to induce the youth and to promote offences against public tranquility,” they said. An FIR has also been filed against Zahra under Section 505 of the Indian Penal Code, which punishes those who induce others to commit an offence against the state or against public tranquillity.
Masrat was asked to immediately report to the Cyber Police Station in Srinagar on Saturday evening. But she didn’t go to the police station pointing that she has no curfew card and due to the lockdown. She says, police hadn’t told her about the FIR.
The Network of Women in Media, India condemns that it was shocked at the charges against Zahra. “NWMI believes that the charges are preposterous in the extreme and amount to rank intimidation of a journalist who has won acclaim for her work, which documents the travails of people of Kashmir,” the organisation said in a statement. “Photographs do not lie and her work, as a photojournalist, are clearly uncomfortable for the powers that be.”
The organisation demanded that the FIR filed against Zahra be dropped. “NWMI [Network of Women in Media] demands that police and security forces stop all such intimidatory and harassing tactics against journalists,” the organisation said.
