Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti on Monday urged the Press Council of India to send a fact finding team to J&K to document harrowing experiences of journalists in Jammu and Kashmir including raids, snooping and intimidation.

Mufti hoped that the PCI should have taken a suo moto note of these widely reported incidents against journalists but lamented that ‘no established watchdog forum, including the courts, has taken any interest in the painful circumstances created in J&K, not to speak of any interventions.’ “I urge PCI to send a fact-finding team to J&K, to independently verify these claims and take remedial action,” Mufti said. She has sent a copy of this letter to the Editors Guild of India as well.

The People’s Democratic Party president, claimed that unwarranted harassment of journalists has become a norm and this policy has been implemented by raiding their homes, summoning and interrogating them on frivolous grounds such as innocuous tweets. She claimed that conducting background checks of journalists and their family members by CID, withdrawal of benefits including accommodation of some senior journalists, seizure of mobile phones, laptops, confiscating passports and ATM cards has become a routine.

Mufti spoke in the wake of recent raids at the residences of four journalists including Showkat Mota, Hilal Mir, Shah Abbas and Azhar Qadri, whose electronic gadgets including phones and laptops were illegally seized along with ATM cards and passports of their spouses.

“This comes close on the heels of the harrowing experiences that the journalist community in J&K has been subject to post the abrogation of Article 370 by the Indian government…

We have witnessed the manner in which fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and expression enshrined in the Indian constitution have increasingly come under attack especially in the last two years by a hostile and insecure dispensation,” she said.

The PDP president also shared a questionnaire with 25 queries, which she claimed is being served to journalists under investigation. The questions included, describing present and past activities, property details, political allegiance, sources of income and relations in Pakistan. “You will note that apart from asking very irrelevant and personal questions it is based on the assumption that their personal ties and loyalties lie with anti national networks,” she said.

The former chief minister stated that in a democratic set up, a free and independent press is crucial and essential for government institutions to function in a transparent manner with due accountability towards its citizens.

Mufti claimed that 23 journalists as per the reports have been put under the Exit Control List. “Even students who bag scholarships in prestigious colleges in top universities of the world are not allowed to go and study there. Recently a student was deboarded from a plane,arrested and subsequently released,” she said.

The PDP president said that a sizable number of journalists are either threatened or charged with sections under UAPA or sedition law because of their reportage on J&K, as they don’t cater to the PR stunts of the ruling dispensation.

“Reporting truth to power is being criminalised with every passing day…I strongly believe that the journalists working and reporting in J&K are amongst the bravest in the world especially at a time when a large section of the Indian media has become a propaganda extension of the Central Government,” she said.

Mufti, who is also vice president of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration, an amalgam of regional parties formed to fight for the restoration of special status and statehood of J&K, said that journalists operate in hostile environment and frequent curfews, encounters, hartals and other adverse security situations has not weakened their determination to ensure that truth doesn’t become a casualty.

“There have always been issues and disagreements between the State and media but never before has the freedom of expression been virtually guillotined in any part of the country as it has been done in J&K for the past three years,” she alleged. She blamed the ruling dispensation for perpetuating communal mindset throughout the country through a diabolical method to gain political mileage and relevance by demeaning and marginalising an entire community.