SRINAGAR: Months after the High Court in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir quashed his detention under the black law Public Safety Act, Kashmiri journalist Asif Sultan has finally been released after spending over five years in unlawful imprisonment.

According to Kashmir Media Service, Asif Sultan was imprisoned in Ambedkar Nagar district jail in Uttar Pradesh. The IIOJK High Court quashed his PSA on December 11, last year, stating the detaining authorities “did not follow the procedural requirements in letter and spirit”. However, Asif Sultan continued to remain in jail for nearly three months to get clearances from the IIOJK administration and finally walked out of jail on Wednesday.

Asif Sultan was arrested by Indian police in 2018 during a nocturnal raid from his home in the Batamaloo area of Srinagar on charges of ‘harboring militants’ and subsequently booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). After prolonged appeals for bail, the IIOJK High Court granted him bail in 2021, but the New Delhi-installed territory’s administration booked him under PSA and shifted him to Ambedkar Nagar district jail.

When Asif Sultan was arrested he was working with the monthly magazine ‘Kashmir Narrator’, now closed, and wrote a news story on the martyred youth leader Burhan Wani, that became a trigger for his arrest.

Asif was jailed when his daughter was six months old. His father Muhammad Sultan was quoted by media that his daughter, who is now six years old doesn’t recognise his father.

Several international organizations including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had been demanding the immediate release of Aasif Sultan. In 2019, he received the annual John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award by National Press Club of America.