Indian journalist receives death threats for saving Kashmiri students

Sagrika Kissu helped arrange lodging, transport for 18 students

A 26-year-old Indian journalist has been at the receiving end of death threats from hard-line groups in the country for helping save Kashmiri students post Pulwana attack.

Earlier on February 14, a Kashmiri youth had rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into a convoy of security personnel, killing 40 Indian soldiers in Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK).

 

Following a raft of incidents of Kashmiris being attacked across India, Sagrika Kissu helped arrange lodging and transport for 18 students who left the cities of Ambala, Dehradun and Jaipur.

Kashmiri students had tweeted thanking her for taking care of them.

Kissu was hit with a volley of vile messages, slander and abuse on social media.



A post on Facebook, written by a Kashmiri Pandit, called her a “female,” who “is offering to help those Wahhabis who kicked out her family in 1989 out of Kashmir.”

This was not the first time that Kissu was targeted on social media. In 2016, she was criticised for uploading a photograph with Khurram Parvez, a prominent human rights activist in Kashmir. She removed the photograph.

In March, last year, she was bashed for reporting that Rohingya Muslims did not attack a Republic TV journalist as he had claimed.

A Facebook post, with photos of her with author Arundhati Roy and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid, said she was seen with “anti nationalists.”

“We Kashmiri Pandits were always nationalists and will remain nationalists come what may,” the post said.