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While the police hasn’t specified which post of hers attracted the charge, reports suggest that it was a picture that she tweeted from her 2019 article in The New Humanitarian.
Arifa Jan suffers frequent panic attacks nearly 2 decades after her husband was gunned down by Indian army in 2000,she can still hear the gunshots and sees her husband’s blood-soaked body when she thinks of him,“There were 18 bullet holes and I still remember how deep they were." pic.twitter.com/QOw2wHzllU
— Masrat Zahra (@Masratzahra) April 17, 2020
Reacting to the charge, Zahra said she is ‘just a journalist, not a social activist’, and said the police action is an attempt to suppress her from bringing out stories of repression in Kashmir.
“I am among the very few female photojournalists in Kashmir and have been working really hard to learn and to create my space for the past four years. They (police) want to silence me. They want to suppress me as I bring out the repressed voices and stories of Kashmir,” she told The Print.
Social media outrage
Soon after the news went viral, there was strong criticism from journalists, activists and the public alike, who have alleged that registering the case amounts to intimidation and silencing of the press.
People were appalled as to how an anti-terror law meant for hardened terrorists, could be applied to a mere picture on social media and called the charges ‘outrageous’. Here’s how people are standing in solidarity with Zahra:
