Three more journalists detained during raids in Srinagar and Budgam districts; mobiles, computers, laptops seized

Srinagar: The Editor-in-Chief of Kashmir Reader, Haji Hayat, was detained for “questioning” by police along with three other journalists after their houses were raided in different parts of Srinagar, Budgam and Pulwama districts on Thursday.
Haji Hayat’s house in Pampore area of Pulwama district in south Kashmir was raided early Thursday morning, and he was brought to the Shergarhi police station in Srinagar for questioning.
Police said in a press release that a total of 7 locations were raided and searched, including premises belonging to Showkat Motta in Srinagar, Khaksar Nadeeb Adnan in Srinagar, Haji Hayat in Pampore, Haji Hayat’s office in Srinagar, Ishfaq Reshi in Budgam, Asif Dar (based abroad) and Saqib Magloo in Srinagar.
“Incriminating materials including mobiles, computers, laptops, pendrives, simcards, Jihadi literature, banking documents, dummy gun, US & Russian currency notes were recovered and seized by the respective teams,” police said.
The detained journalists were allowed to go home in the evening and were asked to report again on Friday morning.
Police say that the raids were carried out in connection with the recent online threat issued to journalists by an online blog by The Resistance Front (TRF) believed to be an offshoot of Lashkar.
The threat on this dubious blog, by the name of “Kashmir Fight”, was posted about 10 days ago with names of 12 working journalists.
The blog called some of the journalists as military intelligence conduits, while some others were dubbed as army sources.
Police have maintained that the raids were carried out on basis of leads they obtained from earlier raids conducted on Saturday in Srinagar, Anantnag, and Kulgam districts.
Khalid Gul, Muhammad Raafi and Waseem Khalid, Raashid Maqbool, and others have been visiting Shergarhi police station in Srinagar for five consecutive days now.
“They are being summoned for examination every day,” the news agency quoted the police official as saying.

Reader correspondent