Will go on indefinite hunger strike from April 1: Yasin Malik
SRINAGAR: The Chairman of banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front Yasin Malik has announced to go on ‘fast unto death’ from April 1 alleging that he is not getting a fair trial after a TADA court framed charges against him in a 30-year-old case.
Malik, who is currently lodged in Tihar Jail, has written an open letter which was revealed to media by his family in Srinagar on Friday.
“A concocted case has been framed against me by the NIA too and on the other hand a trial is going on in Jammu TADA court where without hearing me or giving me a chance to represent, my colleagues and I have been chargesheeted on March 16,” Malik said in the letter.
He said though he has every legal right to be presented physically before the court but he was not allowed to do so before the trial court. “I am being presented through video conference where neither I am able to hear the arguments of lawyers nor am I allowed to speak,” Malik alleged in the letter.
A TADA court in Jammu on Monday framed charges against Malik and six others allegedly involved in the killing of four unarmed Indian Air Force (IAF) officials in 1990 in Srinagar.
Malik said he has already withdrawn his counsel and will be sending the same in writing as whenever he tries to speak the volume is muted.
He said these cases are politically motivated. “Taking these things into consideration, I have reached to the conclusion that I must go on an indefinite hunger strike against this authoritarian attitude and dishonouring of the 1994 ceasefire pledge by the Indian government,” Malik said.
In the letter, Malik has dwelled into his history of how he decided to give up militancy after he was approached by top intelligence officers and several civil society members like Kuldeep Nayar, Rajmohan Gandhi, ex-chief Justice Rajinder Sachar and Wajahat Habibullah during his time in jail in 1992.
“They wanted me to give peace a chance,” he said. “I was told that if I shunned the armed path and returned to peaceful non-violent struggle, we will be provided with a genuine political space and efforts will be made for the resolution of Kashmir dispute through meaningful dialogu,” the letter reads. Malik said he accepted the transformation “without surrendering his ideology” and after his release in 1994 he declared a unilateral ceasefire.