Today marks the fifth day since the editor of The Kashmiriyat, Qazi Shibli was detained at the SherGhari police station, Srinagar, Kashmir.
As Shibli’s family awaits the word of his safe return, the family spoke to The Kashmiriyat about their ordeal.
Khytul, the younger sister of Shibli, said, “I met him yesterday. After being questioned for more than eight hours on Friday, a day before Eid-al-Adha, at the Cyber Police Station, Srinagar, we were informed that he was being held back.”
“Then on 1st August he had been taken to the PCR Hospital for reasons that the officials didn’t inform us about either,” Khytul said.
Talking about how the family would daily arrange for lunch and dinner for Shibli and send it to the police station, Khytul said, “The day before yesterday (August 2nd), our relative wasn’t allowed inside the police station Sher Ghari. The police officials clearly told him that Shibli wasn’t there and had been shifted”.
Throughout these days Shibli’s family was unsure of where and how he was after his summoning to the cyber police station on July 31st.
“Yesterday, on 3rd August, some unofficial sources confirmed that Shibli was held in the police station Sherghari where he was previously questioned. We left that very same time to go see him. Upon our arrival, the police officials asked us to leave denying his presence there”.
“We didn’t leave. We waited.”
It wasn’t until a police officer later came out to call the family inside, that they got to know Shibli had seen them waiting outside and appealed to the officers to let them see him.
“Shibli said he saw us through the window.
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Khytul states the reason for her meeting with Shibli being brief as, “They were preparing to shift him to the Central Jail Srinagar.”
Asking Khytul about her talk with Qazi Shibli at the police station, she said, “He (Shibli) was being questioned about several stories and his sources of information for The Kashmiriyat.”
Khytul says her brother, Shibli, had undergone “four days of psychological torture in the name of questioning.”
The police officials on Monday did not inform the family about any of the charges on Shibli but they had confirmed that the family would have a chance to bail him out on 6th August.
As of today, the family confirms Shibli being booked under 107 CRPC, a law permitting the police to detain anyone based on suspicion and his detention being ‘preventive’.
Pertinently, Qazi Shibli was was arrested last year on July 25th and booked under the Public Saftey Act (PSA) for publishing news about heavy deployment of security forces in Kashmir before August 5. He had been shifted to Bareilly jail and released after 9 months on April 13, this year.
Recently, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), International Observatory of Human Rights, and the Indian Journalists Union (IJU) has released a statement demanding the release of Qazi Shibli, the editor of The Kashmiriyat.
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