Yasin Malik not getting a fair trial, says family

He has decided to go an indefinite hunger strike from April 1, says his sister

Yasin Malik. File

The family of incarcerated separatist JKLF chairman Yasin Malik alleged on Thursday that he was “not being getting a fair trial.”

“I met Malik in jail recently. It felt like our last meeting. His health condition has worsened,” said Malik’s sister, at a press conference in Srinagar.

Family sources said she and her mother met the JKLF leader in Tihar jail two days ago.

“If Malik is not being given a fair trial, he has decided to go on an indefinite hunger strike from April 1. He has already decided to withdraw his lawyer and fight his case on his own,” she said. “The [Srinagar attack] case has been reopened after 30 years to frame my brother,” she said.

Malik’s Pakistan-based wife Mushaal Hussein Mullick, in a tweet, said, “The hunger strike is against ill-intentions of the Indian government and against the attitude of the Jammu TADA court judge.”

Malik has also penned an open letter, which was shared by the family. “During my stay in jail in 1992, top intelligence officers and several civil society members, like Kuldeep Nayar, Rajmohan Gandhi, ex-Chief Justice Rajinder Sachar and Wajahat Habibullah visited me. They wanted me to give peace a chance. I was told that if I shunned the path of armed struggle and returned to peaceful non-violent struggle, we would be provided with a genuine political space and efforts would be made for the resolution of Kashmir dispute,” the letter reads.

Malik said he accepted the transformation “without surrendering his ideology” and declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1994. “It was an unpopular decision and I was declared a traitor by many. I miraculously escaped a bid on my life when I was kidnapped by some militants. Many of my colleagues lost their lives,” he claimed in the letter.

He said there was not a single evidence that could link him or his JKLF colleagues to any armed struggle, overtly or covertly, or to providing any kind of help to any armed group since the ceasefire. “All the governments from 1994 led by Prime Ministers like P.V. Narasimha Rao, H.D. Deve Gowda, I.K. Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh honoured the pledge made to us by the Indian government in 1994,” he said.

The letter comes days after a Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) court framed charges against Mr. Malik and six others in a 30-year-old militant attack case that killed four Indian Air Force (IAF) officials in Srinagar in 1990.