A Jammu court granted bail to Kashmiri scholar Aala Fazili, nearly three years after his arrest by the Jammu Kashmir Police for allegedly writing a ‘seditious’ article in 2011.
The court of the additional sessions judge observed that the evidence linking Fazili to the article titled “The Shackles of Slavery will Break” was weak. It noted that out of 44 witnesses, only 10 had been examined, and none confirmed his authorship. “There is very weak evidence which connects the applicant with the authorship of the article and if the applicant due to weak evidence is acquitted at the end of the trial, his period of incarceration would not be compensable by any means,” the court stated.
The court highlighted that no government action was taken from the time the article was published in The Kashmir Walla on November 6, 2011, until April 4, 2022, when the State Investigation Agency (SIA) filed the case. Referring to a Jammu and Kashmir High Court judgment that granted bail to Fahad Shah, the editor of The Kashmir Walla, the court noted, “There was no call to arms or incitement to an armed insurrection against the state in the controversial article. There is no incitement to violence of any kind much less the acts of terrorism or of undermining the authority of the state with the acts of violence.”
The SIA charged Fazili under Section 13 and Section 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), along with Sections 121, 124, 153-B, and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code, alleging that the article intended to provoke unrest and glorify terrorism. However, the high court previously quashed some of these charges against Shah, citing a lack of evidence of violence or insurrection. “There is no evidence on record. The entire charge sheet (filed by the SIA in the case) is silent with respect to this fact that somebody has chosen the path of violence, merely because the ‘Article’ was provocative in nature. The charges leveled …. are based on assumptions (and) without any legal foundation,” the high court had observed.
The court also pointed out that Shah, accused of publishing the article, had already been granted bail, emphasizing that the publication played an equal or greater role than authorship in the alleged offense. “His co-accused (Fahad Shah) has already been admitted to bail who has allegedly published the said article and his role is not less than the role of the applicant because had the article not been published it was of no effect if it remained in the diary of the applicant,” the court ruled.
Following the court order, Fazili was released from Kot Bhalwal jail on February 12, 2025, and returned home that evening. “It’s a relief to have him back home after all these years of uncertainty and struggle,” his brother, Sami Fazili, said.