Facing three separate cases ranging from kidnapping to murder and money laundering, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Yasin Malik’s decision to go on a hunger strike from July 22 is seen as a last-ditch effort to change legal course of the cases.
A Delhi court in May this year awarded Mr. Malik a life imprisonment in the 2017 terror funding case and for organising street protests in 2016, with Jammat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Hizbul Mujahideen supremo Syed Salahuddin among the 12 other accused in the case.
Mr. Malik, who is pleading the cases himself, is now pressing for his physical presence before the court in Jammu when it hears the 1989 kidnapping case on August 23. He has demanded that he should be allowed to do a cross-examination of the witnesses. The abductee, Rubaiya Sayeed, had already identified Mr. Malik as her abductor earlier this month in the case. Ms. Sayeed is the daughter of former Union Home Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed and sister of former J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti. The court has asked Ms. Sayeed to be present during the next hearing in Jammu on August 23.
