Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan re-arrested days after release

Aasif Sultan, a former editor of Kashmir Narrator magazine, has been re-arrested under ‘anti-terror’ law days, two days after his release following five years in jail.

A Kashmiri journalist, who was released after spending more than five years in jail earlier this week, has been re-arrested by police in another case under India’s stringent “anti-terror” law, according to his lawyer.

Aasif Sultan, 36, has been sent to a five-day police remand after he was produced in a court in the city of Srinagar on Friday, Adil Abdullah Pandit, Sultan’s lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

Pandit said that Sultan was arrested on Thursday in a 2019 case regarding violence inside the central jail in Srinagar under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which international rights groups have described as a “draconian” law. Srinagar is the largest city and summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.

Rights activists have said getting bail under a UAPA case is nearly impossible, which means Sultan could stay in jail without trial indefinitely.

The case is related to “the sections of rioting, unlawful assembly, endangering human life, attempt to murder under Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 13 of UAPA for advocating, abetting or inciting unlawful activity”, according to the lawyer.

At the time of the violence, Sultan was already lodged in jail. The riots inside the jail had erupted over a move by authorities to shift prisoners to jails outside Indian-administered Kashmir. Hundreds of Kashmiris have been lodged in jails in other parts of India, making it difficult for families to meet their relatives.

Sultan worked as an assistant editor for a Srinagar-based English magazine, Kashmir Narrator, which is now defunct, when he was arrested in