The Jammu and Kashmir administration has sacked three employees, including a journalist turned public relations officer of Kashmir University, for alleged militant links, tightening its crackdown on people suspected of having supported the “azaadi” (freedom) movement in the past.

Officials said the three government employees were Kashmir University PRO Faheem Aslam, police constable Arshad Ahmad Thoker and revenue department officer Murawath Hussain Mir.

This has taken the number of employees sacked in the two-year-old crackdown to 52.

The government is firing employees by invoking Article 311 (2) (c) of the constitution, which allows the termination of employees in the interest of the security of the state without any proper inquiry and without giving them a chance to be heard.

Top Valley politicians condemned the move, accusing lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha-led administration of misusing the provision of the constitution.

“The LG admin is institutionalising a permanent state of disintegration in J&K. Criminalising livelihood on preposterous reasons of ‘terror links’ at a time when the state is reeling from unemployment is only deepening the trust deficit,” former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti tweeted.

Before Aslam, the government had sacked scientist and former head of Kashmir University’s teachers’ body Dr Muheet Bhat, chemistry professor Altaf Hussain Pandit and a faculty member of the department of management studies Majid Maroof Qadri for alleged militant activities.

A dossier, circulated unofficially by the security agencies, claims that Aslam is a “diehard secessionist” and “a key propagandist for terrorists and terror outfits”. It also said Kashmir University, where he works, was known as the “epicentre of secessionist activism” and was an “important breeding ground for terrorism”.

Although the dossier refers to some of Aslam’s controversial posts, it has offered no evidence of his links with militants. An acquaintance wondered why police took no action against Aslam for all these years if they believed he had militant links.

The dossier referred to some of his alleged “now deleted” social media posts and said they proved beyond doubt that he was a “hardcore Pakistan Embedded High Value Asset (PEHVA) of terror outfits” responsible for “promoting and glamorising terrorism” besides being a “biggest narrative terrorist” between 2008 and 2018.

The PEHVA is the latest term coined by security agencies against journalists in Kashmir. They previously used the term “narrative terrorism” for journalist Fahad Shah who has been under arrest since February 2022.

The dossier said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) was already probing the terror and ISI links of the Greater Kashmir newspaper, where Aslam previously worked. Greater Kashmir is the Valley’s largest circulated English newspaper.

It claims Aslam was affiliated with JKLF’s Yasin Malik and virtually acted as “Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s public relations officer” while working for Greater Kashmir and the Kashmir University.