After 658 days in jail, Kashmir journalist Fahad Shah shares his story

On a chilly winter afternoon, Fahad Shah stares at the wilted flowers in the walled compound of his home on the outskirts of Srinagar. 

“It feels different to be free,” he says. “I wake up and see my family, and it feels good.” 

Mr. Shah, a prominent journalist from Kashmir and a contributor to The Christian Science Monitor, was released on bail last week after being jailed for 658 days. Indian authorities charged him with “glorifying terrorism” and publishing “anti-national content,” as well as receiving foreign funds illegally. The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, however, found insufficient evidence to try Mr. Shah on terrorism charges, and granted the beleaguered editor bail. 

Global media watchdogs and journalists from the region view Mr. Shah’s experience as part of a wider crackdown on media in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where authorities have been accused of intimidation, harassment, and the systematic targeting of critical voices. Press freedom advocates have welcomed Mr. Shah’s release, demanding that all remaining charges against him be dropped and the blockade on his popular news portal, The Kashmir Walla, be reversed. 

“Fahad’s ordeal reflects the challenges journalists in Jammu and Kashmir endure for doing their work,” says Kunal Majumder, India representative of the Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ). “We also call for the immediate release of journalists Aasif Sultan and Majid Hyderi, who face similar charges and are in preventive custody even after being granted bail by the court.”

“Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir must stop this trend of criminalizing journalists and be tolerant of critical and dissenting voices,” he adds.

Kashmir’s ongoing media crackdown

After his initial arrest in February 2022, Mr. Shah was held in a series of police facilities and jails across the region. After he secured bail in one case, authorities arrested him for another. When he secured bail in that too, they slapped him with the Public Safety Act, a draconian law that allows a person to be held in jail without trial, though the high court quashed that case months ago. He was eventually booked under four different cases in what rights groups describe as a “revolving-door detention.”

Aakash Hassan

Fahad Shah shares his memories of his time in jail at his residence in Srinagar, India, Nov. 25, 2023. He describes the months of “revolving-door detention" as crushing.

Mr. Shah says this coordinated effort to keep him behind bars was crushing.

“Every time I would feel like [I was] getting released, something new would happen,” he says. 

Last week, a court declared that local law enforcement lacked evidence to prove charges filed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, a stringent anti-terror law, and that Mr. Shah did not pose a “clear and present” danger to society.

Keeping him in jail “would mean that any criticism of the central government can be described as a terrorist act because the honor of India is its incorporeal property,” states the court’s bail order. “Such a proposition would collide headlong with the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in Article 19 of the constitution.”

Indeed, these freedoms are under sharp threat in Kashmir. 

It has never been easy for journalists to operate in the heavily militarized Himalayan region, but under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kashmir – and India more broadly – has experienced a significant press freedom backslide.

After the Modi government stripped the region of its limited autonomy and imposed a monthslong communication blackout in 2019, the crackdown on Kashmiri journalists intensified. Many have been questioned by police, had their homes and news offices raided, been forced to reveal sources, and been barred from leaving the country. In August, authorities blocked access to The Kashmir Walla’s website and social media in India, effectively shutting down one of the region’s last independent media organizations without explanation. 

Today, there are at least four Kashmiri journalists who remain incarcerated. 

Days after Mr. Shah’s bail, a court quashed the Public Safety Act charge against Sajad Gul, a Kashmir Walla trainee who has been in jail since January 2022. Mr. Gul has yet to be released. 

Another journalist, Irfan Mehraj, was arrested in March under terrorism charges, and Mr. Sultan and Mr. Hyderi, as mentioned by India’s CPJ representative, also remain imprisoned.

Adjusting to life outside jail

Relatives, friends, and fellow journalists have been thronging Mr. Shah’s home since his release. 

“It is really moving to see so many of my colleagues,” says Mr. Shah. “Everyone was hugging, and there were these tight hugs, and people hugging twice, thrice; it made me feel I have not been forgotten. ... There are people who have been waiting to see me.” 

Dar Yasin/AP

Fahad Shah sits with colleagues in the outskirts of Srinagar, India, Nov. 24, 2023. Indian authorities have released the prominent Kashmir journalist on bail nearly two years after he was arrested amid a broader crackdown on media in the region.

They discuss the state of journalism, fill him in on who got married while he was in jail, and crack jokes to lighten the mood. And when Mr. Shah describes his time in jail, legs covered under a blanket, everyone in the room listens intently.

“Prison breaks you bit by bit,” he says. 

He describes his “worst days” of incarceration during the initial months of his arrest, when he was confined to a small cell where he couldn’t stretch out his body properly. 

“I was not in touch with my family. I don’t know what was happening outside that cell,” says Mr. Shah, who looks frail and fatigued, with dried lips and dark circles under his eyes. “I was exhausted and mentally tortured. ... I used to get these hallucinations and imaginations about what must have happened at home.”

Those who know him well say he looks shattered. But it wasn’t all so painful. 

After being sent to Kot Bhalwal jail in June 2022, Mr. Shah says he made peace with his new reality and tried to become part of the jail community.

“There are prisoners of different kinds and [from] different areas,” he says. “Only inmates are there for each other in happiness and gloom.”

He also had time to read lots of books, mostly about his favorite subject: culture and media. 

“Other than that, I would read newspapers. But there wasn’t much to do,” he says. 

All the while, Mr. Shah says he felt like he was becoming a character in an article. The questions he so often asked as a reporter – about how long a person had been in prison, the charges against them, and what it was like being targeted by the state – were suddenly relevant to his own life.  

“There was a point when I was writing about these people, and then I became one of those people,” says Mr. Shah. “I became the character of my own story. Now it was about me.”

Mr. Shah knows that spending 21 months in jail has changed him as a person and as a journalist, but he’s not sure what comes next. 

While longing for his release in jail, he made plans about everything, from the kinds of food he was going to eat when he got out to when he would return to work. Now that he is free, he says he feels out of place. 

Right now, his priority is to consult doctors about his mental and physical state, he says. “I’m still trying to figure out things.”