Islamabad
The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has said that its illegally detained Chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik has been on hunger strike in Tihar Jail since March 4 against Indian judicial terrorism and the callous attitude of the Indian judiciary.
The JKLF Chief Spokesman, Muhammad Rafiq Dar, flanked by party leaders including Saleem Haroon, Sajid Siddiqui and Khawaja Manzoor Ahmed Chishti addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Thursday, expressed concern over the already deteriorated health of Muhammad Yasin Malik.
He said that Modi-led Indian government was victimizing him on the basis of political vendetta and deliberately endangering his life. He demanded immediate and unconditional release of all illegally detained Hurriyat leaders including Yasin Malik.
Questioning the Indian judicial system, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front leader said that even after observing the pathetic health condition of Yasin Malik due to hunger strike, the TADA court judge in Jammu on the behest of Indian government has accelerated the hearings of the cases against Yasin Malik and his colleagues from weekly to daily basis.
Rafiq Dar said that Yasin Mlik’s solitary confinement at Delhi’s Tihar jail is violation of basic human rights.
He said the registration of new concocted cases against him by Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA), re-opening and speedy trial of more than three decades old cases in Jammu instead of Kashmir, the use of video link during court hearings and delinking or muting the video in the course of hearing with an aim to deprive Yasin Malik of presenting his viewpoint are some of the examples of India’s callous attitude towards the Kashmiri leadership. He said that Showkat Bakhshi was facing the same treatment at Ambedkar Nagar jail in India.
He said on March 10 Tihar Jail Superintendent informed the said judge that Yasin Malik is not in a position to be produced before the court because of his continued hunger strike since 4th March, but the judge ordered the superintendent of jail to produce him before the court on video link the next day.
On 11th of March, he said, Yasin Malik, unmoved on a stretcher or bed with a drip in his arm vein and a doctor standing nearby was produced and what came to surprise everybody was that the hearing was adjourned for next day. This clearly indicated that the said judge behaved more like a police officer or a BJP party worker than a judge, the leader added.
The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front leader said that hanging of Muhammad Maqbool Butt and Muhammad Afzal Guru and life imprisonment till death of near about three dozen Kashmiris and, pre and post 5th August aggression arrests and shifting of top resistance men and women leaders including thousands of youth to the Indian jails had established the fact that pro-freedom people especially the youth have been the victim of Indian judicial terrorism.—KMS
