New Delhi: On January 14, senior Kashmiri journalist Bashaarat Masood from The Indian Express was called to report to the Cyber Police Station, Srinagar.

Once inside the station, Masood was told to wait for hours on end. After spending nearly seven hours in the station, Masood was asked to report back the next day – with the suggestion that he bring along a friend or colleague.

The next day, when Masood reached the station, he was taken to the district magistrate’s office and asked to sign a bond. The bond, written in Urdu, asked the journalist not to repeat his mistake. The journalist was now curious and skeptical, and asked the officers what ‘mistake’ the bond was referring to.

The bond was linked to a story Masood had reported on political reactions to the recent police action seeking information about the Valley’s mosques and who runs them. Upon learning that their reasoning for the bond was apparently rooted in the apprehension that Masood was a threat to public law and order for authoring the story, he refused to sign. While the reporter refused to speak to The Wire, sources close to Masood told The Wire that because of his refusal to sign the bond, he was made to report to the station for three more days. After this incident, sources told The Wire that at least two other reporters have also been called in by the police.

“Bashaarat Masood, Assistant Editor, and a member of the Srinagar bureau of The Indian Express since 2006, was called, on four days, to the Cyber Police Station, Srinagar, and asked to sign a bond which he has not signed. The Indian Express is committed to doing what is necessary to uphold and protect the rights and dignity of its journalists,” The Indian Express said in response to a query from The Wire.

The Wire has confirmed that the reporter in Srinagar of another prominent national daily Hindustan Times, Ashiq Hussain, was also “summoned” but he did not comply with the demand to go to the police station. The newspaper said it "sought a written summons, with reason, so that it can respond", as otherwise Hussain was told “you will be told the reason when you appear before the police”. The Wire has reached out to Hindustan Times for comments regarding this, and the article will be updated when a response is received.

Journalists in the Valley, those associated with both national and local publications and freelancers, have reported being called in for questioning by the police and security agencies over routine reporting, social media posts and interactions, including being asked about sources and editorial decisions. Many journalists told The Wire they were fearful of reprisals, legal entanglements or further harassment, and requested anonymity while describing the frequency, purpose and intensity of these interactions with the authorities. They said the fear of being put on no-fly lists, blacklisted and surveilled was only too real.

“I have to think 10 times before I submit any story to my editor, sometimes I request them to keep it anonymous. They understand because they see what’s happening in Kashmir,” a freelance journalist who now no longer reports from Kashmir told The Wire.

Veteran journalist Nirupama Subramanian flagged the growing pressure on reporters in J&K, pointing to a pattern of police summons over routine news coverage. In a post on X, she said that correspondents of Delhi-based national newspapers were being “summoned by J&K police, harassed about routine ‘he said’, ‘she said’ reports and asked to sign bonds they won’t do such reports again”. She noted that one correspondent was called in repeatedly over three days, and that the apparent silence of the newspaper may have emboldened the authorities to summon another reporter as well.

“If they can summon the correspondent of such a big masthead and face no pushback, imagine our situation,” a Kashmiri journalist reportedly told her, underlining the heightened vulnerability of local reporters who lack the institutional backing of national media organisations.

“There needs to be a public pushback on this by the media house, because an attack on one journalist is not an attack on him or her alone but an attack on the entire media. Public silence emboldens the authorities to target others, because they know that there won’t be people speaking up,” Subramanian told The Wire.

Other instances

Just recently, on December 17, 2025, the police had seized the phone of The Wire’s J&K correspondent Jehangir Ali, without providing any reasons, a hash value for the seized device or an FIR. The phone was returned a day later, after The Wire went public with the news and issued a statement criticising the illegal seizure.

In November 2025, the State Investigation Agency (a branch of the J&K Police) conducted a raid on the Kashmir Times office in Jammu and seized equipment and documents, alleging that the outlet was involved in a “criminal conspiracy” and dissemination of anti-national content. The newspaper has rejected these accusations and called them= attempts to intimidate independent media. “...a raid, this kind of a narrative building, it just shows their desperation to vilify us because we dare to speak, because we dare to be reborn as a digital format and at a time when all voices in Jammu and Kashmir have been systemically silenced and you cannot dare to question anybody,” Kashmir Times’ executive editor Anuradha Bhasin told The Wire at the time.

Media freedom organisations have condemned such actions, saying that detentions, raids and summons deepen a climate of fear and self-censorship in the region. The International Federation of Journalists characterised the Kashmir Times raid as part of “ongoing repression of press freedom in J&K by Indian authorities”.

In May 2025, in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack, the J&K Police detained a senior Srinagar-based journalist after summoning him over a social media post, framing his online activity as “promoting disaffection” and questioning him under broad public order grounds. The Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) unit took the journalist into custody, seized his digital devices and characterised his social media presence as extremist and damaging to “peace and sovereignty”, even as his work was widely recognised as independent reporting on Kashmir’s socio-political environment.

In a statement on May 7, 2025, the CIK wing of the J&K Police said that the journalist, who worked with Turkey-based Anadolu news agency, was detained for “inciting sentiments among young minds and instigating secessionist sentiment by portraying Kashmiris as victims of systemic extermination” through social media.

However, it is only understandable for Kashmiri journalists to circle back to 2019 whenever such incidents happen. Since August 2019, when the Narendra Modi government scrapped J&K’s special status and imposed a sweeping communications blackout, pressure on the media has steadily intensified. For months, journalists in the Valley were unable to report freely as mobile networks and the internet remained shut, movement was restricted, and access to official information was tightly controlled. Press freedom groups later said that the post-2019 period marked a turning point, with Kashmir becoming a testing ground for stricter media control through surveillance, police questioning and legal intimidation. Rights groups say that in Kashmir such scrutiny has become even more frequent and normalised; the pattern since 2019 points to a steady tightening of state control over the press, rather than isolated incidents, with the space for critical journalism shrinking year after year. Reporters Sans Frontiers too has remarked on this: since 2019, J&K has been described by press freedom monitors as one of India’s most restrictive environments for journalists. At least 20 journalists have been arrested for their reporting in the years following the revocation of Article 370, with many others facing legal action or extended police scrutiny.

Vicious cycle

Sajad Gani Lone, president of the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference, also criticised the police action against journalists, calling it “reprehensible”. Reacting to reports of reporters being summoned over routine news stories, Lone questioned why the police should intervene when journalists are “doing a story based on facts”. Describing the move as “a new low”, his remarks reflect growing political concern in the Valley over the targeting of journalists and the shrinking space for independent reporting in J&K. CPI(M) leader and MLA M.Y. Tarigami, MLA Kulgam, also called the incident “a fresh attempt to browbeat journalists into submission”.

For Kashmir’s journalists, the cycle is vicious: repeated summonses, institutional pressure and the lack of a community safety net have become a part of an entrenched system that limits critical reporting, encourages self-censorship and sidelines independent media voices in the region.

Tarushi Aswani is an independent journalist.

Note: This article was updated with additional details at 8:50 am on January 21, 2026.

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