Police intelligence wing State Investigation Agency on Thursday raided the “defunct” Jammu office of the Kashmir Times, the oldest surviving English-language news organisation in the region, which alleged “yet another attempt to silence us”.
The SIA said the searches were linked to an FIR registered against the media house for its “involvement in criminal conspiracy with secessionist and other anti-national entities operating within and outside Jammu & Kashmir”, and “in disseminating terrorist ideology”.
It claimed to have recovered “a revolver, 14 empty cases of AK-series weapons, three live AK rounds, four fired bullets, three grenade safety levers and three suspected pistol rounds”.
The newspaper’s editors — Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal and her husband Prabodh Jamwal — denied the allegations and said the newspaper was being “targeted” because it asked “difficult questions when others remained silent”.
The agency also searched the Jamwal home in Jammu.
Anuradha has been a fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and what she calls his “Hindu-chauvinist movement”.
The Jammu-headquartered Kashmir Times, once the largest circulated English daily in Jammu and Kashmir, has been a victim of the government’s crackdown on media freedoms in the region since the constitutional changes of 2019.
The newspaper suspended its Jammu and Srinagar print editions “in 2021-2022 after relentless targeting” and transitioned to the digital format. Both the editors shifted overseas.
Sources said the raid began early in the morning after the agency asked the office manager to open the locks.
The newspaper said it had received no official intimation or statement confirming the government action.
“Our office, where the media reports suggest the raids took place, was shut since the last four years and out of operation,” it said.
The SIA statement said the FIR indicated the newspaper was “disseminating terrorist and secessionist ideology, spreading inflammatory, fabricated and false narratives, and attempting to radicalise youth of Jammu and Kashmir”, among other things.
In a joint statement, the editors said: “The baseless accusations of activities inimical to the State and the coordinated crackdown on the Kashmir Times are yet another attempt to silence us.
“Criticising the government is not the same as being inimical to the State. In fact, it is the very opposite. A robust, questioning press is essential to a healthy democracy.
“Our work of holding power to account, investigating corruption, amplifying marginalised voices strengthens our nation. It does not weaken it.”
“We will not be silenced,” they added, appealing to “our colleagues in the media” and “civil society” for support.
In August, the lieutenant governor’s administration had ordered 25 books written by acclaimed Indian and foreign writers as forfeit — requiring anyone who had a copy to surrender it to the authorities — citing threats of radicalisation and the alleged glorification of terrorism. Anuradha had written one of these books, A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370.
In an opinion piece published in The New York Times in 2023, Anuradha had accused the Centre of stifling media freedom in Kashmir and the rest of India, infuriating the government.
“His (Modi’s) Hindu-chauvinist movement, which has normalised intolerance and violence against Indian Muslims, has already put severe pressure on India’s once-rambunctious press, with journalists surveilled and jailed, and the government using strong-arm tactics against media outlets to ensure favourable coverage,” she had written.
“Modi’s final assault on India’s press freedom has begun.”
Anuradha had challenged in the Supreme Court the communication blockade imposed in the region in 2019.
The Kashmir Times was founded by Anuradha’s father and veteran journalist Ved Bhasin in 1954.