NIA Arrests Two Kashmiris on False Charges of Aiding Pahalgam Attackers

NIA Arrests Two Kashmiris on False Charges of Aiding Pahalgam Attackers

The two Kashmiri civilians Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar and Bashir Ahmad Jothar who were recently arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India proved once more the highly disputable and much criticized work of the agency in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). Official sources said that NIA accused the two men of feeding, housing and logistically supporting three Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who became involved in the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 8 troopers. The NIA accuses the suspect of aiding the attackers at one of the huts situated in Hill Park an idyllic setting in Pahalgam and operates the practice of the said attackers to selectively kill the victims on a basis of their religious identification.

The currently registered case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), is RC-02/2025/NIA/JMU. Nevertheless, despite the official version increasing number of calls to question and criticize the legality and rationale of arrests goes. The two Kashmiris have been categorically denied of any role in the incident by both the families of those arrests and the local people. They declare themselves non guilty claiming that the accusations are made up and an offshoot of the repression at the hands of the state in the area. This denial can be further solidified bearing in mind that NIA with its infamous history of planting evidence and filed cases based on political vendetta under UAPA which is a law that has been criticised internationally by human rights group as an instrument of arbitrary arrests and detention without trial.

Originally established to be the apex counter terrorism agency in India. The NIA is increasingly regarded in IIOJK as a political suppression outfit that is not a bona fide law enforcement agency. The agency has been harassing more often and since the emergence of a Modi government which is accused of suppressing dissent to pro freedom activists, students, academics and even journalists in the name of national security. In the occupied Kashmir which has been on the receiving end of punishing crackdowns by the authorities at the slightest sign of a call for autonomy or independence.

The NIA operations are said to infringe on fundamental human rights. Its practices such as arresting people without substantial evidence detaining them incommunicado as well as citing draconian laws to bar the arrests have been denounced by monitors like the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations Special Rapporteurs. Scholars have been making chilling comparisons between the NIA and state militias, indicating that its techniques seem to be more like those of ideologically or religiously based terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda or Daesh, but not like those of a professional and unbiased anti-terrorist agency.

Such an instance of the case between Parvaiz and Bashir Jothar is made by reference to the greater picture of India following an ostensibly non legal but an nevertheless legally infused policy of weaponizing legal and security structures to harass and intimidate civilians in IIOJK. According to analysts these arrests are not just pertinent and summarily caused but are systematically organized to instil a sense of fear in the populace so that all resistance and opposition are crushed.  The arrest of two local Kashmiris on questionable grounds is not only useful to the Indian state in projecting the impression that it is dealing with the scourge of “terrorism”. It is also effective in instilling a white terror in the rest of the population by reminding them that any form of dissension can be dealt with by simple kidnapping and legal bullying. Even more worrying is the time and political context of these arrests. The locally based result of the security crackdown seems to have far to come yet Indian officials have recently proclaimed which observers count as announcement that hard-handed acts in the area are not over yet perhaps another military misadventure over the Line of Control into Azad Jammu and Kashmir or even further into Pakistan territory itself.

There is some reason to these fears. False flag operations are an established history of the Indian state when aggressive military action seems justified by increasingly tough domestic political weather or pressure placed on the ruling party by international forces. Speculation is growing that the arrest of the Jothars and the spin that is currently taking place around the Pahalgam attack are all part of a much bigger plan to pave the way to a similar incident as the one that occurred May 7 and took away innocent lives and brought to fore more tension between the two nuclear armed neighbours. According to some observers New Delhi is also taking advantage of the global situation where countries are preoccupied with other issues including the Iran-Israel tension to make another stealth movement. Using instabilities in the world and portraying itself as a victim of cross-border terrorism, India expects to get away with everything by relying on its Western allies because this has been the case before on many occasions.

The critics believe that the UAPA which the Jothars were booked under has turned into the tool of choice to exercise state oppression. That law has vastly empowered the government in that they can arrest people who have not committed any crime and keep them in custody up to 180 days without any charge and even in case they are granted bail they can be held indefinitely. In Kashmir this has taken the form of climate of terror with civilian population living in fear of being labelled as terrorists simply because they express discontent attend any calm protest or even just post on social media. The law is run with little over watch on the part of the judiciary which virtually makes the NIA and other security agencies, into a judge, juror and executioner. The UAPA has been criticized by the legal professionals who demanded its abolishment or drastic revision due to the lack of compliance with the principles of democracy and the international human rights regime. In the case of the Modi government surveillance an investigation under the UAPA has instead increased with its application to a wide range of actors in the civil society including lawyers, environmentalists and students’ movements typically on the pretext of anti-national conduct.

In Kashmir meanwhile these events have only managed to alienate the disillusioned population further. The Indian state has decided to militarize IIOJK, downgrade the autonomy censure the press and imprison thousands in absence of due process rather than redress the real political grievances and aspirations of the people of IIOJK. This is all the worse because the NIA is still used as an instrument of state control and any hope of peace is compromised. Such measures by a state actor do not prevent radicalization as has been observed by international observers, but in fact fuels this practice. When it becomes increasingly evident that the possession of the land of Jammu and Kashmir is only based on the price of the life of civilians and denial of justice to the civil society. There is a greater chance that the succeeding generation will learn to think of the Indian state as an oppressor rather than the protector. It is this suppression and counteraction that becomes the very reason behind the continuation of the conflict in the Kashmir region, even after all these decades of trying to come out of it through dialogue or through diplomacy.