New Delhi: The Wire has learnt that Peerzada Ashiq, a senior journalist based in Srinagar representing one of India’s premier national dailies, The Hindu, received a phone call from a Jammu and Kashmir policeman on January 20, asking him to come and meet the cops. When asked what the meeting may be about, the policeman calling reportedly said he did not know. Ashiq, sources told The Wire, was away from the city that day and said he would not be able to come. The policeman then said he could come when he returned to Srinagar.The Wire has reached out to Ashiq to ask about the police calling him. This article will be updated when he responds. The Wire has also contacted The Hindu head office in Chennai for comments.Earlier, The Wire had reported on January 20 that several reporters working for national dailies in Srinagar had been “summoned” for questioning by the police, without being given details of why they were being called in. Both Basharat Masood of The Indian Express and Ashiq Hussain of Hindustan Times received such calls. Masood, who has reported from the Valley for over two decades now, was made to stay in the police station for over 15 hours over four days and even told to sign a bond admitting to a “mistake”, which he refused to do.Even after he went to the police station, Masood was not told why he had been called in. “All along, the police made him wait and did not specify to Masood the reason for calling him to the station and making him sit there for hours,” the newspaper has stated. The only hint was in the bond he was presented with – it was linked to a story Masood had reported on political reactions to the recent police action seeking information about the Valley’s mosques and who runs them.Hindustan Times has asked the J&K police for a summons in writing which they can respond to, until which time their reporter has not responded to being called in.Sources told The Wire that several of the journalists summoned recently were called in for their reporting on the same issue. The Wire tried speaking to some more local journalists on the matter, however, even anonymously, journalists have refused to detail the situation, fearing that their phones might already be under surveillance.Local journalists also highlighted that they feel disturbed at the way media institutions have been delaying taking a public stand for their own journalists, who have served them for decades.Political parties in J&K as well as national opposition parties like the Congress, senior journalists and editors, and press bodies have condemned the police action. In a statement released on Wednesday, Digipub said that “Criminalising such public-interest journalism and coercing reporters into signing bonds without due process constitutes a grave assault on press freedom.” The media body has asked the J&K Police to immediately stop such practices. The Editors Guild of India has also said that “there can be no space for such arbitrary actions in a democracy, of which the media is a key pillar”.The latest round of summons is part of a larger pattern of media intimidation and suppression in Kashmir, observers have pointed out. This pattern has become even more heightened since August 2019, when J&K’s special status was stripped away by the Narendra Modi government.