Danish Irshad has covered : Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, for a decade. A Home Department order dated 29 July places him under a counter-terrorism designation that restricts movement, banking and public life and names no offence against him.
Twelfth on a List of Twenty-Four: A Journalist Enters Pakistan's Terrorism Watchlist
Aalimi Nation · International Affairs Desk | Srinagar
Danish Irshad found out from social media.
On 18 August, the journalist and researcher a columnist for The Kashmir Times, a reporter with the Lahore-based Neo News, and the author of Azadi ke Baad, a history of the region — saw his own name circulating on an official list. He confirmed it afterwards through his own sources. No court had informed him. No trial had taken place.
The document was a notification of the Home Department of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, numbered Home/HS-FS-4(8)/P-H/2026 and dated 29 July. It invokes Section 16(1) of the region's Anti-Terrorism Act, 2014, and cites the 41st Cabinet meeting of 5 June. Twenty-four people are named. Irshad appears twelfth, identified as a resident of Poonch and described, along with the others, as an activist of the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee.
According to the reporting reviewed for this article, the notification specifies no individual act, offence or conviction against him.
"How did a journalist's speaking and writing become an act of terrorism?" Irshad told the online outlet Drop Site News. "Declaring anyone guilty without trial can never be justified."
What the Fourth Schedule does
The Fourth Schedule is an administrative watchlist under Pakistan's counter-terrorism framework, used to monitor individuals authorities suspect of links to proscribed organisations. It is not a criminal conviction and does not follow from one.
Its practical effects are nonetheless substantial. Listed persons are subject to state monitoring and to restrictions that can reach their movement, their banking and financial activity, and their participation in public life.
That gap between a designation that is administrative in form and punitive in effect is the centre of this case. A person can be placed under sustained restriction without any tribunal having weighed evidence against them, and without the state being required to say publicly what they are alleged to have done.
Who Irshad is
Irshad has reported on the politics of : Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, (POK) for close to ten years, working out of Muzaffarabad, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. He is from Rawalakot, in Poonch district the town that has seen some of the most serious violence of the current unrest.
His work sits precisely where the region's most sensitive story is: the confrontation between a mass protest movement and the authorities. He has interviewed families caught in the crackdown, covered the negotiations between the JAAC and the federal government, and written analytical columns questioning the constitutional settlement between Muzaffarabad and Islamabad.
That body of work is, on the available record, the only conduct anyone has publicly connected to his designation.
The crackdown around him
The listing did not occur in isolation.
On 5 June, the regional government proscribed the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee under the same 2014 Anti-Terrorism Act, stating in a Home Department circular that the group was engaged in terrorism and had acted in a manner prejudicial to the peace and security of the state. Police arrested more than a hundred people associated with the committee on 6 and 7 June, and sealed its central office in Muzaffarabad, according to Amnesty International.
The protests continued regardless. Eleven people were killed in clashes between police and demonstrators in Rawalakot in June, with more than seventy injured. The JAAC has since claimed that more than eighty civilians have been killed by security forces over the course of the crackdown — a figure attributed to the movement and not independently established here. Internet access was severely restricted during the protests, according to the monitoring group NetBlocks. A three-phase regional election has proceeded with the principal opposition movement outlawed.
Irshad is also not the first journalist affected. Sohrab Barkat, who reported on the protests through his YouTube channel, was arrested in early June under sections of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act relating to defamation and false information, for allegedly promoting and endorsing the banned committee. The Committee to Protect Journalists called for his release on 12 June.
The Human Rights Council of Pakistan said on 20 August that the notification named Irshad over alleged links to the proscribed committee, and warned that the action could deter journalists from documenting protests and scrutinising the conduct of authorities. "Journalism is not terrorism," the council said, calling for international attention to the case.
Journalists in Pakistan have made similar arguments publicly, describing Irshad as a working reporter and researcher and questioning whether counter-terrorism instruments are being applied to non-violent journalism.
These are advocacy positions rather than judicial findings, and should be read as such. The authorities may hold information that has not been made public.
If they do, the remedy available to them is straightforward: state the allegation, identify the conduct, and submit it to review.
The question the case actually poses
A state may lawfully restrict individuals where there is credible evidence of a genuine security threat. The principle is not in dispute anywhere.
What is in dispute is the standard of accountability that must accompany such powers. A designation that requires no charge, no hearing and no published reasoning, yet delivers consequences comparable to a penalty, sits uneasily with any account of due process.
For Irshad, the immediate consequences fall on his ability to move, to bank and to work. For every other reporter in the region, the effect is more diffuse and probably more damaging: an understanding that covering a protest, interviewing a bereaved family or criticising an official decision may be treated as participation in the events being reported.
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is holding elections while its largest protest movement is banned, its internet has been disrupted and its journalists are being listed. Independent reporting is the mechanism by which the public distinguishes between the government's account of such a period and the movement's. Narrowing that mechanism does not settle the dispute over what is happening in the region. It only ensures that fewer people can verify it.
The authorities have not published a detailed justification for Irshad's designation. Until they do, the case will be read exactly as it appears on the document: a journalist, twelfth on a list of twenty-four, with no offence recorded beside his name.
Aalimi Nation has sought comment from the Home Department of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir. This report is based on the Home Department notification dated 29 July 2026 as reported by The Kashmir Times and Journalism Pakistan, statements by the Human Rights Council of Pakistan and Amnesty International, and Irshad's own comments to Drop Site News.
