Kissu was born in 1992 in Jammu. She belongs to a Kashmiri Pandit minority and her family migrated from Kashmir to Jammu in late 90s because of the insurgency in the region.
Career
From March to November 2017 she wrote articles for The Financial Express. She has written articles for NewsClick since January 2018, and is reporting on Jammu and Kashmir since then. She was also author at Hong Kong-based news media website Asia Times. Kissu faced criticism when she interviewed the fathers of hizb militants Burhan Wani and Saddam Padder, who had been killed in army encounters. The interview records more than 2 million views on video publishing platform YouTube. Floods of messages, comments abusing Kissu on social media are still present. In another event, when tensions between India and Pakistan emerged after the Pulwama Attack in 2019 and both countries was in war-like situation but some people tried to create environment of dialogue between two countries. According to CNN, Kissu was one of the person who promoted #SayNoToWar trend on her twitter to end the war-like situation. According to Kissu, she pushed the hashtag on Twitter in an attempt to help in breaking the cycle of violence and war before it's too late. As she was grown up with the crisis in Kashmir after the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. Kissu covered 2018 Bihar riots as NewsClick Journalist and met fact-finding team United Against Hate, who also covered those riots.
Voluntary work
After the 2019 Pulwama attack, there were many "incidents of Kashmiris being attacked across India, Sagrika Kissu helped arrange lodging and transport for 18 students who left the cities of Ambala, Dehradun and Jaipur." She posted a status update on her Facebook page saying that if anybody needed accommodation they should contact her. After first batch of Kashmiri students came from Dehradun, Kissu went to Jama Masjid Delhi to pickup them. This was the first batch of students whom she helped. The students were in fear, so Kissu spoke to them in Kashmiri language for their comfort. After helping stranded Kashmiri Muslims in Delhi, she was appreciated by many people on social media but some people mostly from right-wing trolled and abused Kissu. A right-wing ABVP member asked, "If you have helped Kashmiri Pandits who are living in tents" and she replied him, "When I was staying in a tent, nobody from your family came to help me".
