Srinagar, Sept. 14 -- By Sanjeev Sirohi

The knock came in Kukroosa, a village in Handwara, in the Kupwara district of north Kashmir, where Shafat Maqbool Wani, known to neighbours as Shaf, had grown up reading.

By September 13, 2025, he was no longer a graduate student weighing invitations to academic conferences abroad. He was a detenue, held under detention order No. 27-DMK/PSA of 2025, signed by the district magistrate of Kupwara under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, on the theory that his books and his bloodline together made him a threat to state security.

Wani had already been cleared once.

On September 8, 2025, a special National Investigation Agency judge in Jammu rejected a bid by the NIA to extend his remand beyond ...