The Jammu and Kashmir Police arrested 26-year-old journalist Adil Farooq Bhat from Lal Chowk, Srinagar on Tuesday. The police have also recovered two live hand grenades from his possession.
The arrest was made shortly after a dreadful grenade attack was carried out just days ahead of the Bharat’s Independence Day celebrations at Hari Singh High Street near Srinagar’s Lal Chowk that left several civilians gravely injured.
Shockingly, Adil Farooq, who is a resident of Khrew, Pampore of Pulwama, South Kashmir is a journalist employed with the CNS New Agency in Press Enclave in the capacity of a sub-editor. The police have confirmed that Farooq is being currently interrogated for his involvement in the terror attacks and suspects that a wider nexus is at play.
Soon after the arrest of Farooq, it was brought to the fore that the “journalist” has been arrested for being involved in terrorist activities previously also. While pursuing journalism at the Central University of Kashmir in 2019, Farooq was detained for providing logistical support to Islamic terrorists and booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and kept in Jammu’s Kot Bhalwal jail for working as an overground agent of terrorists.
Following his arrest and investigations in 2019, the J&K Police had also accused Adil Farooq of assisting in terror activities by providing logistic help, lodging facilities, transportation, food and other necessities to terrorists in Kashmir. In addition, the Public Safety Act (PSA) dossier had levelled charges of hatching a “criminal conspiracy” to carry out acts of terrorism in the area of Khrew, against Adil and his accomplices.
The 2019 dossier regarding Adil Farooq has been shared by Kashmiri journalist Aditya Raj Kaul and it states, “You met with various militants in whose influence you developed a militant ideology. As a result, you established a link with the Hurriyat leader Bilal Gani Lone under whose instructions you remained pro-active in instigating the same ideology amongst the people and youth of the area. You have also liaison with one militant, namely Mohammad Ayoub Lone, alias pilot of banned militant organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and his other militant associates for whom you are working as over ground worker, as being a local you know topography of the area which leads to the safe transportation of illegal arms and ammunition through unconventional routes and away from the security forces.”
Looking at the above dossier, it is disturbing to see that terrorists are termed as ‘militants’, a milder and misleading term, even by security forces. Just another of the several self-defeating delusions of our secular state!
Islamists and pro-Pakistani secessionists were quick to jump to Farooq’s defence after his 2019 detention. A section of leftist-liberal media platforms had extended their moral support to the terrorist aide masquerading as a journalist. Pak sympathizing notorious separatist Mirwaiz Umar Farooq had vehemently condemned Farooq’s arrest by the police and asserted that the journalist-in-the-making had been falsely implicated under the Public Safety Act (PSA).
Strongly condemn the arrest of Adil Farooq, a journalism student at Central University of Kashmir who been falsely booked under Public Safety Act(PSA)and shifted to Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu. It seems the govt is hellbent upon ruining the careers of students and youth by….
— Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (@MirwaizKashmir) February 13, 2019
The pro-Pak brigade also claimed that the BJP government at the centre was targeting Muslim youth in Kashmir and destroying their ‘budding careers’ by charging them in false cases. Some also stressed that the PSA was being used as a government tool to silence dissenting voices in Kashmir, and had watered down the fact that the aspiring ‘journalist’ was caught red-handed while playing an active role in terror activities in the valley.
Pro-Pak separatists and secular liberals have once again started to rally behind the arrested terrorist/journalist after his detention on the 10th, and it doesn’t come as a surprise. What is concerning is that the terrorist aides in the valley are now choosing journalism as their “day job”. Being journalists, the likes of Adil Farooq have access to sensitive areas and information which can prove to be threatening for the safety of the country as well as its civilians. We all had become used to left-liberal journalists waging intellectual jihad or acting as terror apologists; Adil Farooq Bhat has just taken it to the next level.
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