Days after victim Rubaiya Sayeed identified Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik, 56, as her abductor in the 1989 kidnapping case, a spokesperson of the banned outfit on Monday said the incarcerated JKLF leader “will undergo a hunger strike from July 22 in the Tihar Jail in New Delhi”.
“The hunger strike from July 22 is to demand a fair trial and his physical appearance in court. Malik had actually decided to start the hunger strike from July 12, a day before the last court hearing on July 13, which he postponed for 10 days on the request of jail authorities for them to have some time to take up the issue with the higher authorities and the government,” a JKLF spokesperson said, in a statement issued in Srinagar.
Malik was identified by Ms. Sayeed, who was abducted in December 1989, when her father was a union home minister at the Centre, as her abductor on July 13 this year. The identification was made on the basis of pictures exhibited before the court. Five JKLF militants were released in exchange for her release in 1989.
Malik has already been sentenced to life imprisonment in a terror funding case in May this year by a special court in New Delhi.
“The JKLF condemns the unfair judicial hearing in all the fictitious and fabricated cases filed by the Government of India against Malik. His non-presentation in the courts as illegal, inhumane and undemocratic,” the spokesperson said.
The JKLF has threatened to organise “symbolic protest hunger strike camps in important power centres like London, Brussels and New York”.
