KARACHI: Offices of a prominent English daily in India-held Kashmir have been sealed by the administration.

The editor of Kashmir Times, Anuradha Bhasin, said in a tweet on Monday night that the administration had sealed the offices of her newspaper in Srinagar “without any due process of cancellation and eviction”, just like she herself was evicted from her apartment, which was located in the Jammu region.

According to Scroll.in, Ms Bhasin had been evicted from her apartment two months ago. In her tweet last night, Ms Bhasin said that her “valuables were handed over to the ‘new allottee’” by the Estates Department when she was evicted.

“Vendetta for speaking out! No due process followed. How peevish!” she tweeted.

Speaking to Kashmir Reader, an English daily newspaper also published from Srinagar, Ms Bhasin said: “There was no technical reason on which the office could have been sealed. However, it was due to me speaking up for press freedom. We are going to fight it.”

The Estates Department’s officials, however, were of the view that there were two buildings, one of which was the Kashmir Times’ office, while, another was “allotted as a residence to Ved Bhasin sahib”, according to Indian media outlets.

Anuradha Bhasin is a daughter of Ved Bhasin — the founding editor of Kashmir Times.

“Since Bhasin sahib died some years ago, we issued them notices to vacate the house. They themselves handed over the building to us and today our officials went to take possession,” the department’s deputy director was quoted as saying.

Rejecting the Estates Department’s version, Ms Bhasin said that the officials had “simply locked their office” without any prior notice.

“Some lower-rung officials used to come to our office, verbally saying that the allotment has been cancelled but when we asked for eviction notice, they never provided it to us,” she told The Indian Express. “In fact, our staff went to their office, saying if there is any eviction order give it to us [...] but they weren’t giving [it].”

She further said that the equipment, including computers and other infrastructure, was locked up in the office as well. Ms Bhasin said the paper would approach the court over the matter.

Kashmiri politicians and leaders condemned the closure of the offices. Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of occupied Kashmir, said that Ms Bhasin was “one of the few local newspaper editors in [occupied] J&K who stood up to Government of India’s illegal and disruptive actions in the state”.

“Shutting down her office in Srinagar is straight out of BJP’s vendetta playbook to settle scores with those who dare to disagree,” she tweeted.

Kashmiri leader Omar Abdullah, in a tweet, said that the development “explains why some of our ‘esteemed’ publications have decided to become government mouthpieces, printing only government press handouts”.

“The price of independent reportage is to be evicted without due process.”

The move was also denounced by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) as an “intolerable attack on the freedom of the press”.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2020