The hidden cost of a Kashmir byline

DH journalist Zulfikar Majid brings you a personal account of the hazardous life of a reporter working in a zone of violence and conflict.

In Kashmir, a region with a protracted history of political and armed unrest, speaking the truth is like walking a tightrope. For 22 years, I have walked this journalistic tightrope, reporting from a place that demands not just courage, but also a readiness to be
misunderstood and vilified.

Journalists here are rarely seen as neutral. We are called ‘agents’ — of India, Pakistan, militants, separatists, the army, police, or political parties. Of course, a majority of us don’t fall in any of those categories. Kashmir may be called paradise on earth, but for reporters, it is a place where their stories are frequently contested.

The police can summon us for “discussions” if a story goes “wrong”. Militants and separatists issue threats if they feel a report goes against their interests. The threats are real — veteran journalist Shujaat Bukhari was shot dead by unidentified militants in the heart of Srinagar in 2018.

Our families beg us to stop, because our stories could invite interrogations, boycotts, bullets, and even exile. Today, about two dozen reporters, editors, and newspaper owners in Srinagar live and work under security. I am one of them. We are neither VIPs nor war correspondents embedded with the forces — we just reported stories that some did not like.

Midnight threats

I started reporting in 2003, when the Valley was moving from more than a decade of violence to cautious dialogue. Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf was talking about peace. On this side, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was offering a “hand of friendship”. But on the ground, militants were carrying out fidayeen (suicide) attacks, and separatists were inciting stone-pelting and calling for endless shutdowns.

I used to work out of a cramped, dimly lit newsroom at Greater Kashmir, the Valley’s most prominent and influential English daily. It was the kind of place where the news never stopped, and the phone often rang late into the night, with militant commanders demanding to know why their statements hadn’t made it to the paper. “Defy us and die,” one said, almost casually. Pressure from the state was even more suffocating. Officials from security forces, and even politicians, would call the newsroom or walk in to issue instructions: “Drop that story. Change that headline.”

In February 2006, at age 27, I realised that my press card was no more of a protection than a paper shield. A splinter group of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) stormed into our newsroom, furious that we had missed their statement in that day’s edition. They thrashed our staff ruthlessly — reporters, sub-editors, layout designers, anyone within reach. Within minutes, desks were overturned, computers smashed, phones ripped from the walls. That night, I walked home shaken. “Can’t you get into some other job?” my mother said.

‘You’ll be hit’

The next big blow came on January 15, 2022. That afternoon, I walked into the erstwhile Kashmir Press Club with fellow journalists to revive an institution paralysed by the absence of a democratically elected body. I believed we were doing the right thing by seeking to restore democratic order. Instead, I walked into a storm of vilification. Without a single phone call asking for my version, some journalists branded me the face of a so-called “state-sponsored coup”.

That narrative, spread with morphed pictures and social media whispers, was weaponised by rivals and amplified by political figures. Even seasoned journalists and press bodies, people who should have known better, ignored the first rule of our profession: find the other side of the story. The real story? Those who maligned us never wanted democracy in the Press Club. They wanted to run it like a private fiefdom, according to the whims of their political masters. And they weren’t strangers. They were fellow journalists and former colleagues, people I had broken bread with and publicly defended in difficult times.

Bitter cold night

That night, the air turned colder than ever — not just outside, but inside. Threats poured in from all directions, some open, others veiled. Then came the knock. A senior police officer said: “We have inputs you will be hit, and hit soon. So please leave tonight.” I didn’t argue. I didn’t pack. I just left — my ailing parents, and the home where my children had taken their first steps.

Since then, I have lived under security in a shabby government-allotted house, 17 km from my house in Srinagar. Its walls are high and stained, its gates rusted. Coils of concertina wire snake along the boundary walls. It is a heavily guarded neighbourhood, home to seven or eight other journalists living under the same conditions.

Though I am fortunate, living under security is no luxury. You begin to measure your freedom in metres. There is no ‘mohalla’ culture here. No shared cups of tea. No festivals spilling into one another’s homes. My children don’t invite their friends over. They don’t play outside. They call it our “jailhouse”. My elderly parents live away from us, in our own house. I wasn’t around when my father’s voice began to fade from throat cancer and my mother wept quietly behind a closed door.

All of this — this loneliness, this isolation — happened because of one manufactured hate campaign during the Kashmir Press Club episode. Of course, I visit my parents, relatives, and friends sometimes, but with security always present, there is an inherent hesitation to speak freely, show emotion, even be lighthearted. Privacy feels elusive.

Undemocratic ways

Behind every byline from Kashmir is a story of risk and resistance. Salim Pandit, Kashmir bureau chief of a national daily for 25 years, has faced death threats from militant groups throughout his career. He recalls a particularly isolating moment in 2013, when separatist leader late Syed Ali Geelani filed a defamation case against him in the High Court over an article alleging that the leader had faked an illness.

“Not a single lawyer was willing to represent me. They were either too afraid or too aligned. I walked into the courtroom alone, not knowing whether I would be jailed, or worse,” Pandit recalls. However, he had support from his employer, and a judge who recognised the merit of his position and dismissed the case. I must add that fear of intimidation is more pronounced for stringers and reporters at smaller newspapers.

But it wasn’t just separatists. In April 2018, the Mehbooba Mufti-led J&K government filed an FIR against Pandit for a report he filed on stone-pelting on a tourist bus. The story, he says, was based entirely on what the police had said. “And then came the vilification — not only from separatists and the government, but also from trade and tourism bodies, local newspapers, and social media abusers,” he says. He is also appalled at the power wielded by the police: “Calling young reporters to the police station for questioning — this isn’t how a democracy treats its journalists.”

Weighing in on the subject of intimidation, veteran journalist Yousuf Jameel, known for his insightful, balanced coverage of the Kashmir conflict for over four decades, says, “The 1990s were the worst, but even today it is never easy.” Jameel recalls the time in the early 1990s when a militant group accused him of being part of ‘the political process by New Delhi’ and gave him 48 hours to leave Kashmir. But he stayed and kept reporting. “You have to rise above the pressure, and leave it to the reader (to judge what is true),” he says.

In September 1995, a parcel bomb at Jameel’s Srinagar office seriously injured him and killed his colleague, photojournalist Mushtaq Ali. The trauma sent ripples beyond the newsroom: his father suffered a heart attack, and his mother sank into depression. In the six months it took him to come back, Jameel lost his contracts with two international media outlets. He suffered financially but persevered — he moved to smaller organisations.

Even our moments of empathy are closely watched. After the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani in 2016, I walked for miles through a curfew in south Kashmir to reach funeral sites, protest grounds, and the homes of the dead and the injured. I still remember visiting a hospital where a 14-year-old boy lay after being shot in both eyes. When I asked the doctor if the boy would ever see again, he simply shook his head.

That night, a senior police officer called me and said: “We know you are reporting with sincerity, but don’t fall for separatist narratives. Your words reach Delhi and abroad. Be careful.” As a reporter I did what I had to —write facts. But as a human, I wept that night.

Women’s absence

Women face more deadly hazards — and that is why few choose journalism as a career here. A woman journalist, speaking anonymously, says, “It is not because women lack talent or courage. But in a conservative society like ours, one story can trigger a flood of rumours that don’t just target your work, but also your character, your family, your future.”

She has seen female journalists walk away, “not because they weren’t capable, but because they weren’t allowed to survive the fallout”. “The moment you publish something someone doesn’t like, they don’t just question your journalism — they come for you as a woman. Families worry that a daughter in journalism could bring shame or danger,” she explains.

200 km for a story 

In August 2019, Kashmir was plunged into an unprecedented communication blackout following the abrogation of Article 370. Neither the Internet nor the landlines worked, yet the stories didn’t stop.

On the night of August 7, I drove through treacherous mountain roads to Kargil in Ladakh, over 200 km away, just to find a patch of 2G Internet. Over the next five days, I filed the stories you might have later read in Deccan Herald in print or online. Some journalists would copy their reports on to pen drives and rush to the Srinagar airport. There, they would beg passengers flying to Delhi to carry the pen drives and hand them over to someone in their newsrooms.

By August 13, the government had set up a media centre at a private hotel, equipped with four desktop computers and 2G Internet connection. With no other way to email stories, nearly 400 journalists queued up every day. We wrote the day’s stories on our laptops, saved them on to pen drives, and waited for our turn. Each journalist got a five- to 10-minute window to email the stories. A week later, the number of computers was bumped up to 10. This bare-bones setup ran until October. Public 2G Internet was restored in March 2020, just as the pandemic locked the rest of the world indoors.

War of words

To all those reading this in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Chennai, Mumbai, or Delhi — catching the weekend news over coffee or scrolling at a coworking space — these experiences may feel distant, abstract, even romantic in some twisted way.

But in Kashmir, journalists live with a gnawing anxiety all the time. Someone is always watching. Someone is always waiting to punish you. Every word is a risk. Every omission is a provocation. Headlines are rewritten multiple times, and not just for grammar or felicity. There is always the fear of being misunderstood, misquoted, or misrepresented. You can be perceived as either too emotional, or too cold. Even the most careful sentence might be the last you ever wrote.

But the real fatigue doesn’t come from breaking news. It comes from sitting with mothers clutching photos of their dead sons. It comes from a woman who died before she could meet her jailed son. It comes from a man worried sick about his granddaughter — she lost her father in a crossfire, and then lost her eyes to pellets. Generations in the Valley have witnessed conflict, and the cumulative burden is immense. “We saw dead bodies daily. Eventually, we became numb,” Jameel says, recalling his coverage of the violence in the 1990s. 

And with so few counsellors around, it can take months to get help. Since the 2022 threat to my life, I have been taking anxiety medication on the advice of a psychiatrist friend.

My wife no longer panics when I disappear for reporting with little or no warning. She has learned to wait patiently and live with hope. My ailing father pleads softly, “Please don’t write anything they won’t like.”

Still reporting

In 2025, the conflict in Kashmir has changed form. But the threats remain. Still, many like me report with a pen in hand, and fear in the heart. Because journalism matters. We are memory keepers. The next time you scroll past a Kashmir dateline, pause and remember that someone put a lot on the line so you could read it.

My hands tremble as I write this. The screen blurs with tears I have held back too long. Sometimes, the journalist doesn’t just tell the story; the journalist is the story. And today, I am that story.

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