NEW DELHI : Kashmiri journalist-author Gowhar Geelani was stopped at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here and not allowed to travel to Bonn, Germany, officials said on Sunday.
This action received criticism from Amnesty India that called on the central government to “immediately lift the communication blackout and stop the harassment, intimidation and censorship of journalists for simply doing their job.”
According to CISF sources, Gowhar Geelani, who recently re-joined the German news agency Deutsche Welle as an editor, was stopped at the airport on Saturday night because a look-out notice was issued against him.
“He was stopped by the immigration authorities on the instruction of Intelligence Bureau,” a CISF official said, adding his flight was to take off around 1 am on Sunday.
According to Geelani, around 9 pm, after collecting his boarding pass, the immigration desk scanned his documents and asked him to wait.
Senior officials were then called to review his travel. A senior official later took Geelani to a room, where he was asked to wait. When Geelani questioned he wasn’t given any reason and was later told that he couldn’t fly abroad as the government had flagged the issue.
Earlier this month, Shah Faesal, the 2009-batch IAS topper who quit the service to join politics, was also denied permission to travel to the US.