Lawfare, Detention – Journalists

Zahid Rafiq, a Kashmiri journalist who has worked for The Hindu and Tehelka in the past, was also stopped by immigration officials at the Delhi airport in September 2021 when he was leaving for the United States to begin a teaching fellowship at Cornell University.

After completing all the international travel formalities at the airport, Rafiq was stopped at the immigration and told he could not fly to the US.  After being barred from flying, he was detained by the Jammu and Kashmir police, flown to Srinagar the next day, and questioned for several hours by the police about his work as a journalist.

Rafiq, according to police sources, was questioned about his work as a journalist before he began to pursue higher education in 2018. In 2012, Rafiq reported in the Christian Science Monitor on Avtar Singh, a former Indian army officer accused of human rights violations in Kashmir.