On August 19, 2023, the journalists at the independent news outlet 'The Kashmir Walla' woke up to find their website and its social media accounts blocked and unreachable.
A few frantic phone calls later, the journalists realized that their independent news website was blocked in India by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the IT Act, 2000.
"We discovered that our Facebook page, with nearly half a million followers, had been removed. As had our Twitter account, ‘in response to a legal demand, " a statement issued by 'The Kashmir Walla' said.
The website is no stranger to run-ins with the law.
Editor Fahad Shah was arrested in February last year under various charges, such as "glorifying terrorism" and for "sharing fake news" on social media.
Despite securing bail twice, he was rearrested by the J&K police and eventually booked under the Public Safety Act, which allows imprisonment without a trial for up to a year. Shah was then arrested five times in four months in what the publication described as "a saga of revolving door arrests".
In January 2022, a trainee reporter with the website, Sajad Gul, was arrested and charged with 'criminal conspiracy'. The statement said Gul remains in prison in Uttar Pradesh under the Public Safety Act.
“This opaque censorship is gut-wrenching. There isn’t a lot left for us to say anymore,” the statement said.
“Since 2011, 'The Kashmir Walla' has strived to remain an independent, credible, and courageous voice of the region in the face of unimaginable pressure from the authorities while we watched our being ripped apart, bit by bit. 'The Kashmir Walla'’s story is the tale of the rise and fall of press freedom in the region.”
'The Kashmir Walla' further said that they were not aware of the specifics of why the website has been blocked in India; why its Facebook page has been removed; and why its Twitter account has been withheld.
"We have not been served any notice nor is there any official order regarding these actions that is in the public domain so far," read the statement.
This is not the first time that a media outlet in the valley has felt the heavy arm of the government. On October 19, 2020, one of the offices of 'The Kashmir Times’ -- office located among several other newspaper offices in Srinagar’s Press Enclave -- was sealed by the union territory's estates department.