The Delhi High Court on Monday sought separatist leader Yasin Malik’s response to the National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) plea seeking enhancement of his life sentence to the death penalty in a terror funding case, reported LiveLaw.
A bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Shalinder Kaur granted Malik four weeks to file his reply and listed the matter for hearing on November 10. The apex court stated that Malik, who is lodged in Tihar Jail, was not produced virtually as directed earlier and had not filed his response in pursuance of its August 9, 2024, order. On that date, the court had ordered his virtual, rather than physical, appearance, citing security threats, the report added
On Monday, the bench directed the jail authorities to produce him virtually on the next hearing date, which is scheduled on November 10.
Malik, the chief of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, is serving a life term after being convicted in May 2022 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code. He had pleaded guilty to the charges and chosen to argue his case in person.
The trial court, while sentencing him to life imprisonment, said the crimes did not meet the “rarest of rare” threshold for a death penalty. It also rejected Malik’s submission that he had followed the Gandhian principle of non-violence.
It also stated that Malik had said the crimes committed by Malik struck at the “heart of the idea of India” and were intended to forcefully secede Jammu and Kashmir from the Union of India, reported news agency PTI.
NIA had previously argued that Malik had “tactfully” avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty. “Any terrorist can come here, do terrorist activities, plead guilty and court says since he has pleaded guilty, I give him only life term and not capital punishment,” the NIA said, as quoted by The Hindu in a 2023 report.
It also alleged that Malik crossed over to Pakistan for training, coordinated stone pelting and spread “rumours” on social media about oppression by security forces. “If this is not ‘rarest of rare’ when someone is continuously, by armed rebellion, killing army people and propagating one region of the nation as separate, there can never be rarest of case. This is rarest of rare case [for awarding a death penalty]… If this is not, what could be,” the NIA said, according to The Hindu.
