Khurram Parvez and Irfan Mehraj walk free after nearly five years — but bail conditions may keep them 800km from home
Prominent Kashmiri rights defender and a journalist held alongside him have been released after 1,703 and 1,219 days without trial
NEW DELHI (MNTV) — Khurram Parvez, the Kashmiri human rights defender whose documentation of enforced disappearances and mass graves made him one of the most recognised figures in the region’s civil society, has been released from prison after nearly five years in custody without trial. Irfan Mehraj, the journalist arrested alongside him, walked free the same day after more than three years.
They were released on July 22 following a bail order issued four days earlier by Principal District and Sessions Judge Pitamber Dutt at Delhi’s Patiala House Court. Parvez had spent 1,703 days in detention. Mehraj had spent 1,219.
But the terms attached to their freedom are severe enough that rights organisations have questioned how much of it is real.
The conditions
The Delhi High Court, hearing an urgent appeal filed by the National Investigation Agency within days of the bail order, declined to cancel the release — but tightened the restrictions considerably.
Both men must now report in person to the NIA’s chief investigating officer twice every week. They may not leave the National Capital Territory of Delhi without prior court permission.
They must attend all hearings, refrain from any public commentary on their case, and avoid any activity or association resembling the alleged offences — a condition explicitly extended to work connected with the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, the organisation both men served.
The practical effect is stark.
Srinagar lies roughly 800 kilometres from Delhi. With reporting days falling on Tuesday and Friday, just three days apart, neither man has any realistic window in which to travel home and return.
Parvez’s earlier bail in a separate case, granted by the Delhi High Court on June 10, had already required mandatory residence in Delhi, surrender of his passport, a bond of 600,000 rupees, and a bar on public statements.
Breach of any condition would allow prosecutors to seek cancellation of bail.
The case
The charges stem from an FIR registered by the NIA in October 2020, alleging that NGOs, trusts, and societies operating in Jammu and Kashmir raised money domestically and abroad under the cover of charitable and welfare work, then diverted it to finance militancy.
The agency alleges that Parvez, as programme coordinator of JKCCS, raised funds from international entities under the guise of promoting human rights and channelled them toward terror-related activity in the Valley, and that he and associates propagated a secessionist agenda through various NGOs while providing material support to protesters during the 2016 unrest.
Mehraj, who worked as a researcher with JKCCS until March 2022 and has contributed to Al Jazeera and other outlets, is accused of being a close associate.
Both men have denied the allegations.
The court that granted bail was notably unimpressed by the strength of the case. Judge Dutt observed that the NIA’s allegations against Parvez rested mainly on the testimony of oral witnesses whose credibility would have to be established at trial — a trial which, more than five years after the FIR was registered, has not begun.
The judge cited the delay as a central factor in granting relief.
He also drew on the Delhi High Court’s June 10 order in Parvez’s separate case, in which a division bench noted that the appellant was infirm and deserved special consideration — while the special public prosecutor argued that his physical condition had not prevented him from continuing activities the state described as anti-national.
Parvez was arrested in November 2021 in the first case and again in March 2023 in this one. Mehraj was arrested by the NIA in Srinagar on March 20, 2023.
Rights response
The International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organisation Against Torture, operating jointly through the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, welcomed the releases while making clear they considered the prosecutions illegitimate from the outset.
The two organisations described the charges of funding terror and propagating a secessionist agenda as fabricated, characterising the case as retaliation for the men’s widely respected documentation and accountability work through JKCCS.
They demanded that Indian authorities drop all charges immediately and terminate the proceedings, noting that judicial harassment continues even after release.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had previously determined that Parvez’s detention was arbitrary and called on India to release him.
Parvez, who also chairs the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances, had before his arrest been among the most persistent chroniclers of alleged abuses by Indian security forces in Kashmir — work that included JKCCS reports on unmarked graves, custodial deaths, and torture.
He was awarded the Reebok Human Rights Award in 2006 after losing a leg in a landmine blast while monitoring elections in the region.
Appeal continues
The NIA moved swiftly against the bail order, filing appeals in both cases and securing an urgent hearing on July 20. A division bench comprising Justices Prathiba M. Singh and Vikas Mahajan declined to stay the release but criticised the trial judge for failing to record any conclusion on whether the accusations were prima facie true, as required under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
The agency’s senior counsel argued that the allegations were grave and that releasing the two men would run contrary to the national interest and could seriously jeopardise national security.
Counsel for Parvez and Mehraj countered that bail orders may only be interfered with in extreme circumstances, and that the trial court had considered all allegations before reaching its decision.
Because the appeals remain pending, the High Court directed that the July 18 orders may not be cited as precedent in any other case — a significant qualification, given how many similar UAPA prosecutions in Kashmir turn on the same question of indefinite pre-trial detention.
What case represents
The prosecution of Parvez and Mehraj has been watched closely well beyond Kashmir, in large part because of what it appeared to signal about the space remaining for human rights documentation in the region since New Delhi revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in 2019.
Under the UAPA, bail is exceptionally difficult to obtain — the statute requires courts to deny it where accusations appear prima facie true, a threshold that has kept many accused in custody for years without any adjudication of guilt.
The delay that eventually secured Parvez and Mehraj their release is itself the clearest indictment of the process: nearly five years and more than three years respectively, spent in prison, for a trial that has yet to commence.
They are out now. But under conditions that bar them from their work, from public comment, and — in effect — from going home.
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