Kashmiri Hurriyat leader Yasin Malik sentences to life imprisonment on fabricated charges

JKLF leader Yasin Malik spend most of his adult life in the Indian prisons for leading the freedom struggle of Indian occupied Kashmir 

An Indian court today sentenced Kashmiri freedom fighter, Yasin Malik, to life imprisonment on fabricated terror funding charges. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had sought the death penalty for the Kashmiri leader and chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) but the court awarded him two life imprisonments. Yasin Malik was denied fair trial.  

This sentence is an apparent attempt on the part of Indian government to silent one of the loudest voices for liberation of Indian occupied Kashmir. Yasin Malik is one of the leading figures of Kashmiri liberation struggle.   

The NIA court handed down two life sentences and five 10-year terms of rigorous imprisonment, which will run concurrently. Moreover, a penalty of Indian rupees one million has also been slapped on the Kashmiri Hurriyat leader.

Yasin Malik has been sentenced under Section 16 (terrorist act), Section 17 (raising funds for a terrorist act), Section 18 (conspiracy to commit a terrorist act) and Section 20 (being a member of a terrorist gang or organisation) of the UAPA and Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 124-A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code. 

Kashmiri leader had submitted that he would not “beg” for mercy, and that court could decide at its discretion. He maintained that if Indian Intelligence can prove that he had been involved in any terrorist activity or violence in 28 years, then he would retire from politics, and will also accept the hanging.

The judge, however, said that since he has already been convicted, there was no point in arguing on the facts of the case and that he was already given the opportunity, the report stated.

The Indian government arrested the Hurriyat leader in 2019, the same year when the special status of Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir was revoked.

In Kashmir's main city of Srinagar, police fired tear gas and pellets to disperse stone-pelting protesters outside Yasin Malik's residence.

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