Srinagar: India’s top counter-terrorism probe agency on Monday arrested a prominent human rights activist in Indian-occupied Kashmir after raiding his home and office, his wife said.
National Investigation Agency (NIA) personnel arrested Khurram Parvez in Srinagar, his wife Samina said. They also seized Parvez’s mobile phone, laptop and some books and his cell phone. “They said it was a case of ‘terror funding’,” she said.
Parvez, 42, is the program coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a widely respected rights group in the disputed region, and president of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearance (AFAD).
The NIA did not immediately issue a statement about the arrest or the raid, but the arrest warrant seen by this news agency shows that Parvez was arrested under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
Mary Lawler, UN Special Reporter on Human Rights Defenders, tweeted: “I hear disturbing news that Khurram Parvez was arrested in Kashmir today and is at risk of being charged with terrorism-related crimes by authorities in India “
“He is not a terrorist, he is a human rights defender.”
NIA officers searched JKCCS offices for more than 14 hours.
In October last year, the NIA raided Parvez’s house and office and seized research material, phone and computer hard drives.
The rights group has monitored violence in the region for more than three decades and several reports have highlighted rights violations by Indian government forces, including torture, extrajudicial killings and unmarked mass graves.
Last week, it drew criticism from security forces for killing civilians in Srinagar during a controversial gunfight with alleged insurgents, whose bodies were hastily buried by Indian police in a remote cemetery without their families.
Following outrage and protests from the families of three of the victims, the authorities exhumed two bodies and returned them to their families.
At least 2,300 people have been arrested under the UAPA – a vaguely worded law that effectively allows people to be held indefinitely without trial – in Indian-occupied territory since 2019, when the new Delhi revoked the partial autonomy of the region and brought it under direct rule.
About half of them are still in prison, and convictions are very rare under the law.
Published in Dawn, November 23, 2021
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