Yasin Malik should get a fair trial: Sajad Lone
People’s Conference president Sajad Gani Lone on Tuesday said that chief of the now banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Yasin Malik should get a fair trial.
Lone’s comments came after Malik was identified by Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of former home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, in her abduction case in 1989, before a special court in Jammu last week.
Malik, who is undergoing life imprisonment in a terror-funding case, has said that he will be going on a hunger strike from July 22 in Tihar jail if his demands of a fair trial and ensuring his physical presence in the courts are not fulfilled.
Malik has moved an application seeking his personal appearance as trials in two other cases against him -- Rubaiya kidnapping and killing of four Indian Air Force officers -- are going on.
“We may have a thousand disagreements with Yasin Malik, but he deserves a fair trial. He deserves a trial where he is able to present his side,” Lone said on the sidelines of a function of his party.
Lone, a former separatist, had switched sides in 2009 and joined the pro-India politics by fighting parliamentary elections, a first separatist to do so in Kashmir after militancy erupted in the Valley in 1989.
He later made it to the state assembly and became a cabinet minister with the BJP support. When the Centre had revoked Article 370 in 2019, Lone was detained for 360 days.
He also criticised Rubaiya’s sister and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti for saying said that she was bound by law to participate in the identification process, which she could not ‘refuse’.
“She (Mehbooba) is an advocate of reconciliation that we need to talk to Pakistan, Salahuddin or militants. If I was at her place, I would have adopted the other model; that of Priyanka Gandhi, who forgave her father’s killers,” Lone said.
He said that in this case, it was a kidnapping. “Though it was wrong and we condemn that, in the spirit of reconciliation given that Malik is already under life imprisonment, the other way could have been adopted. I think the people of Kashmir should also see whether any mainstream party really wants reconciliation,” Lone added.
Rubaiya was kidnapped in December 1989 when her father, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, was the Union home minister at the VP Singh-led National Front government.
She was kidnapped by the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front on December 8, 1989, and released on December 13. Five jailed militants were released to secure her safe return.
Prominent health expert joins People’s Conference
Former deputy director, health, Dr Bashir Chalkoo from Uri joined the People’s Conference on Tuesday, giving a shot in the arm to the Sajad Lone-led outfit.
Chalkoo was welcomed into the party fold by the party president Lone at his residence at Churchlane in Srinagar along with many workers from the northern frontier tehsil of Uri, the party said.
Lone said that his party would hugely benefit from Chalkoo’s experience in public life whose entry into the party fold indicates the ‘positive impact’ his party has made among the people of J&K.