India arrests prominent Kashmir rights activist

SRINAGAR: India’s top anti-terrorism investigation agency on Monday arrested a prominent human rights activist from the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK) during a raid at his home and office, his wife said.

Personnel from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Khurram Parvez in the main city of Srinagar, his wife Samina told AFP. They also confiscated Parvez’s mobile phone, laptop and some books, along with her cell phone.

"They said it’s a case of ‘terror funding’," she said.

Parvez, 42, is the programme coordinator for a widely respected rights group in the disputed territory, the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), and chairperson of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD).

The NIA did not immediately issue a statement about the arrest or raids, but an arrest warrant seen by AFP shows that Parvez was arrested under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

"I’m hearing disturbing reports that Khurram Parvez was arrested today in Kashmir & is at risk of being charged by authorities in #India with terrorism-related crimes," tweeted Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders.

"He’s not a terrorist, he’s a Human Rights Defender."

NIA officers searched the JKCCS offices for more than 14 hours.

The NIA also raided Parvez’s home and office in October last year, seizing research materials, phones and computer hard drives.

The rights group has monitored violence in the region for more than three decades and has exposed rights violations by Indian government forces including torture, extra-judicial killings and unmarked mass graves in numerous reports.

Last week, it criticised security forces for killing civilians during a controversial shootout with freedom fighters in Srinagar whose bodies were hurriedly buried by Indian police in a remote graveyard without their families present.

Following an outcry and protests by the families of three of the victims, authorities exhumed two of the 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 without trial indefinitely — in the Indian-controlled territory since 2019 when New Delhi cancelled the region’s partial autonomy and brought it under direct rule.

Almost half of them are still in prison, and convictions under the law are very rare.