Muhammad Yasin Malik – the Chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a former notorious militant and a top separatist leader along with and senior party leader Showkat Ahmad Bakshi appeared via video conferencing before the TADA Court in Jammu.
According to KMS, others who appeared before the court in person included Javaid Ahmed Mir, Muhammad Salim Nanaji, Javaid Ahmed Zargar, Manzoor Ahmed Sofi, Engineer Ali Muhammad Mir, Wajahat Bashir Qureshi, Muhammad Iqbal Ghandro, Muhammad Zaman Mir and Meraj Ahmed Sheikh.
Yasin Malik has been languishing in Delhi’s Tihar Jail while Showkat Bakshi has been detained in a jail at Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh.
Earlier, the Indian Government set in motion a 30-year-old case against Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Yasin Malik which accuses him of killing four Indian Air force officials.
There are two cases against Yasin Malik. The two cases relate to the killing of four Indian Air Force officers on January 25, 1990, on the outskirts of Srinagar city and the kidnapping of then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter in 1989.
Two chargesheets were filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in August and September 1990 against Malik before the designated TADA court in Jammu. Malik was granted a stay on trial by a single bench of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in 1995 as there was no TADA court in Srinagar.
In 2008, Malik approached the special court saying the trial could be shifted to Srinagar as he was facing a lot of security problems in view of the Amarnath Yatra row — an agitation which had divided people of Kashmir and Jammu on religious lines over the issue of leasing land to outsiders during the annual pilgrimage.
The first case relates to an incident that occurred on January 25, 1990, at Rawalpora, Srinagar. The Air Force employees were fired upon by terrorists in which 40 of them, including a woman, received serious injuries and four IAF personnel were killed. On completion of the investigation, a charge sheet was filed on August 31, 1990, against Malik and five others before the designated TADA court in Jammu.
The second case relates to the kidnapping of Dr Rubaiya Sayeed who was abducted by some gun-wielding terrorists travelling in the same minibus in which she was going to her house at Nowgam. She was taken to some unknown place, where her captors threatened to kill her in case their demands were not met.
