Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan has been rearrested in connection with an old case of unlawful activities filed by Srinagar district police in which he was named as an accused, his family and lawyer said.

The award-winning journalist was arrested hours after he was brought to his home in the Batamaloo locality of Srinagar from Ambedkar Nagar jail in Uttar Pradesh where he was in preventive detention under the Public Safety Act (PSA) since 2022.

Sources said that Sultan was initially summoned by Rainawari police station on Thursday (February 29) and later arrested. “The news has shocked his family who were hoping that his ordeal of more than five years had finally come to an end,” family sources said.

Sultan’s short-lived reunion with his family, which includes a six-year-old daughter who was an infant when her father was arrested, his ailing parents and wife, was prolonged by more than two months due to “procedural delays”.

According to reports, some Kashmiri detainees, who are set free by the courts, have to reportedly get clearances from the J&K administration before they can walk out of jails. The Telegraph reported, quoting sources, that this has become necessary after an amendment to the Public Safety Act.

Sultan was produced in a Srinagar court on Friday (March 1) and later sent to five-day police custody, “The case will come up for hearing again on March 6,” Adil Abdullah Pandit, his lawyer, told The Wire.

Pandit said that Aasif was arrested by Srinagar police in FIR No 19/2019, which was filed by Rainawari police station under Sections 147 and 148 (rioting and punishment for rioting), 149 (offence committed by any member of unlawful assembly) 336 (endangering human life) and 307 (attempt to murder) of Indian Penal Code, besides Section 13 (advocating, abetting or inciting unlawful activity) of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

He said that the case relates to the 2019 incident of rioting at Srinagar’s Central Jail wherein the inmates had allegedly ransacked the barracks after some argument with the prison staff which later turned violent. Inmates had alleged that the desecration of the Holy Quran led to the flare-up, a charge denied by the jail administration.

“At that time, Aasif was lodged in the same jail under FIR No 73/2018, in which he has already been granted bail by the court,” Pandit said.

The FIR No 73/2018 at Batamaloo police station in Srinagar, in which Sultan was accused of harbouring terrorists at his residence in 2018, marked the beginning of his ordeal. The police booked him under Sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and some sections of the Ranbir Penal Code (now Indian Penal Code) and he was later arrested.

At the time of his arrest, he was working with the now defunct, monthly English magazine Kashmir Narrator.

About three years later, a court in Srinagar granted him bail in the case on April 5, 2022, citing the failure of the investigators in providing evidence that linked Sultan to any militant group while ordering his release.

However, before he could walk out of jail, authorities invoked the controversial Public Safety Act against Sultan, while accusing him of “harnessing known militants”, “criminal conspiracy” and “aiding and participating in militant activities”.

He was taken into preventive detention under the PSA and later shifted to Uttar Pradesh.

The PSA dossier strangely accused Sultan, who was awarded the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award in 2019, of being an “over-ground worker of Hizbul Mujahideen” who, while in jail, joined Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an Al-Qaida affiliate.

The dossier also claimed that Sultan was an over-ground worker of The Resistance Front, a militant group which was formed months after Sultan’s arrest in 2018 and which authorities believe is an offshoot of Pakistan Lashkar-e-Toiba terror outfit.

However, the detention of Sultan under the controversial Act was quashed by J&K high court in December last year, which termed the allegations against him as “unsustainable” and urged the authorities to end his “illegal” detention.

“It is unambiguously clear and evident from the perusal of receipt of grounds of detention and other relevant record that only five leaves have been given to detenu,” Justice V.C. Koul observed in his judgment.

The court also pointed out that the detaining authorities in Kashmir didn’t provide Sultan with the copies of the FIR, witness statements or other investigation material of the case, which formed the basis for his preventive detention under the PSA.