Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Nov 24: Police today raided seven places including a newspaper office and its Editor’s house in an investigation into online threats to around a dozen journalists in Kashmir.
Anonymous threats were posted on social media against over a dozen journalists last week, accusing them of working for the security agencies and threatening journalists working for three media houses.
Click here to watch video
This is the second time raids were conducted in the case. Earlier, police conducted raids at 12 locations including those of journalists and some of them were detained for questioning.
The raids were carried out at 7 locations in Srinagar, Budgam and Pulwama. The premises which were raided and searched belong to journalist Showkat Mota in Srinagar, Khaksar Nadeeb Adnan in Srinagar, house of Editor and owner of Kashmir Reader newspaper Haji Hayat in Pampore and Kashmir Reader Office at Batamaloo in Srinagar, Ishfaq Reshi in Budgam, Dr Asif Dar at Bemia who is based abroad and Saqib Magloo in Srinagar.
Few of them were detained by the police for questioning. Police said that those whose houses were searched earlier are being summoned on daily basis for questioning.
Police said that today’s raids were conducted on the basis of vital leads obtained from earlier searches of November 19.
Police said that during today’s search, all the legal formalities and SOPs were followed professionally and incriminating materials including mobiles, computers, laptops, pendrives, simcards, Jihadi literature, banking documents, dummy gun, US and Russian currency notes were recovered and seized.
At least six journalists working with local media houses in Srinagar resigned after the threats.
Police said The Resistance Front (TRF), which is an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Toiba, is behind the threats.
Police also blamed journalist Mukhtar Baba as the mastermind behind putting out the list of journos accusing them of being informers for security forces.
They also accused Sajjad Gul who is originally from Srinagar and the main operatives of the TRF for issuing threats.
In Kishtwar, the SIA raided the house of Minhaj Bashir at village Tund. During searches, some documents and a mobile phone were recovered.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
