NIA seeks death for JKLF chief Yasin Malik

The NIA Friday approached the Delhi High Court seeking death penalty for Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik who was awarded life term by a trial court here in a terror funding case a year ago asserting not giving capital punishment to such a dreaded terrorist will result in miscarriage of justiceThe plea by the National Investigation Agency NIA has been listed for hearing on May 29 before a bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant SinghOn May 24 2022 a trial court in the national capital had awarded life imprisonment to Malik the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front JKLF chief after holding him guilty of various offences under the stringent antiterror lawUnlawful Activities Prevention Act UAPA and the IPCMalik had pleaded guilty to the charges including those under the UAPAIn its petition before the high court for enhancement of Maliks penalty the NIA said if such dreaded terrorists are not given capital punishment on account of having pleaded guilty there will be complete erosion of the sentencing policy and terrorists would have a way out to avoid capital punishmentA life sentence the NIA asserted is not commensurate with the crime committed by terrorists when the nation and families of soldiers have suffered loss of livesThe trial courts conclusion that Maliks crimes did not fall within the category of the rarest of the rare cases for grant of death penalty is exfacie legally flawed and completely unsustainable the antiterror probe agency saidIt emphasised that it has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that Malik spearheaded terrorist activities in the Valley and with the help of dreaded foreign terrorist organisations had been masterminding planning engineering and executing armed rebellion in the Valley in an attempt to usurp the sovereignty and integrity of a part of IndiaNot giving capital punishment to such dreaded terrorist will result in miscarriage of justice as an act of terrorism is not a crime against society but its a crime against the entire nation in other words its an act of external aggression an act of war and an affront to the sovereignty of nation the plea saidOffences committed by the respondent accused are exfacie acts of external aggression brazenly planned and executed by acts of waging war against the nation whereby internal disturbance was created through raising and using trained armed militia within the state and by helping trained terrorist raised in enemy states to infiltrate the borders of India to participate and catalyse such internal disturbances it statedThe NIA claimed there are no mitigating circumstances in favour of Malik and the present case falls within the category of rarest of the rare for imposition of death penaltyThe trial court which had rejected the NIAs plea for capital punishment had said the crimes committed by Malik struck at the heart of the idea of IndiaThese crimes were intended to strike at the heart of the idea of India and intended to forcefully secede JampK from UOI The crime becomes more serious as it was committed with the assistance of foreign powers and designated terrorists The seriousness of crime is further increased by the fact that it was committed behind the smokescreen of an alleged peaceful political movement the trial court had saidIt had however noted the case was not the rarest of rare warranting death penalty The maximum punishment for such an offence is death penaltyThe life term was awarded for two offences section 121 waging war against government of India of IPC and section 17 raising funds for terrorist act of the UAPAAccording to the Supreme Court life imprisonment means incarceration till the last breath unless the sentence is commuted by the authoritiesThe court had awarded Malik 10year jail term each under sections 120 B criminal conspiracy 121A conspiracy to wage war against the government of India of IPC and sections 15 terrorism 18 conspiracy for terrorism and 20 being member of terror organisation of UAPAIt had also awarded fiveyear jail term each under sections 13 unlawful act 38 offence related to membership of terrorism and 39 support given to terrorism of UAPAThe court had framed the charges against Kashmiri separatist leaders including Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate Shabbir Shah Masarat Alam Md Yusuf Shah Aftab Ahmad Shah Altaf Ahmad Shah Nayeem Khan Md Akbar Khanday Raja Mehrajuddin Kalwal Bashir Ahmad Bhat Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali Shabir Ahmad Shah Abdul Rashid Sheikh and Naval Kishore KapoorA charge sheet was also filed against LashkareTaiba LeT founder Hafiz Saeed and Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin both of whom have been declared proclaimed offenders in the case and are living in PakistanThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its 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