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JAMMU: J&K police’s peculiar helping State Investigation Agency (SIA) searched Thursday the long-shuttered bureau of Kashmir Times successful Jammu aft an FIR alleged the 71-year-old English-language paper had engaged successful “criminal conspiracy with secessionist and different antinational entities”.
A parallel hunt was conducted astatine exertion Prabodh Jamwal’s location successful the city.An authoritative spokesperson said investigators seized a revolver, 14 bare AK-series cases, 3 unrecorded AK rounds, 4 “fired bullets,” 3 grenade information levers, 3 pistol rounds, documents, and integer devices from the Residency Road office. According to the spokesperson, the seizures suggest imaginable unlawful possession and suspected linkages with “extremist oregon antinational elements”.
Searches were conducted successful the beingness of an enforcement magistrate.The FIR alleges Kashmir Times and kashmirtimes.com person been propagating “terrorist and secessionist ideology”, pushing “inflammatory, fabricated and mendacious narratives”, attempting to radicalise J&K youth, and inciting disaffection and separatism “through people and integer content”. It accuses the level of challenging India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Jamwal and his wife, managing exertion Anuradha Bhasin — who moved to the US respective years agone and were overseas during the cognition — rejected the allegations successful a associated effect published connected the paper’s integer edition. “The accusations levelled against america are designed to intimidate, to delegitimise, and yet to silence. We volition not beryllium silenced,” they wrote.They said Kashmir Times — founded by Anuradha’s begetter Ved Bhasin successful 1954 — has “stood arsenic a pillar of autarkic journalism”, chronicling “triumphs and failures with adjacent rigour”, amplifying marginalised voices, and asking hard questions.
“We are being targeted precisely due to the fact that we proceed to bash this work,” they said, adding that the people variation was suspended successful 2021–22 aft “relentless targeting”, though integer operations continue.Calling the allegations “bizarre” and “baseless”, Jamwal and Bhasin said they had received nary ceremonial connection from authorities and stressed the Jammu bureau had been unopen for 4 years. “Criticising govt is not the aforesaid arsenic being inimical to the state,” they wrote.
“A robust, questioning property is indispensable to a steadfast democracy.”PDP functionary Iltija Mufti condemned the action, saying Kashmir Times had agelong resisted efforts to soundlessness it. On X, she posted: “Invoking anti-national activities is preposterous & reeks of precocious handedness. In Kashmir each outlet of information is being choked. Are we each antinationals?”J&K lawman CM Surinder Singh Choudhary urged fairness and restraint. “If they person done thing wrong, past enactment should beryllium taken… If you bash it lone to exert pressure, past that volition beryllium wrong,” helium told reporters successful Jammu.
