In Kashmir, a spree of arrests for alleged ‘misuse’ of social media and masking apps

The police in Kashmir’s Ganderbal district released a statement saying they had “saved a youth from joining militancy”. The 17-year-old had been taken into custody and booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The teenager’s offence: “misusing VPNs” to access social media websites still banned in Kashmir.

Virtual Private Networks, or VPN, allow users to mask their location while browsing the internet. In Kashmir, there has been a surge of interest in VPN applications after the government allowed limited access to 329 websites in January, after six months of a complete internet shutdown.