India seeks death for jailed Kashmir leader Yasin Malik
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik. PHOTO: AFP
India’s top anti-terrorism investigation agency on Friday again sought the death sentence for Kashmiri leader Muhammad Yasin Malik after he was given life in prison, the Indian media has reported.
Malik, 57, former chief of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Indian court last year in a terror funding case after he refused to accept a government-appointed lawyer or to defend himself against the charges.
The court had also turned down a plea by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for a death sentence, saying capital punishment was for a crime that “shocks the collective consciousness” of society.
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On Friday, the NIA petitioned the high court in New Delhi again seeking a death sentence for Malik, a senior security official in Indian-occupied Kashmir told AFP.
The petition is due for hearing on Monday, legal news website Bar and Bench reported.
The JKLF was one of the first armed freedom fighting groups to come into existence in India-occupied Kashmir. It supported an independent and united Kashmir. Led by Malik, the group gave up armed resistance in 1994.
A resistance movement broke out in IoK in 1989 with fighters demanding an independent Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.