A friend of Arundhati Roy, the chief guest of former Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh, and awarded ‘Youth icon’ by India Today group, separatist Yasin Malik pleads guilty to all the charges, including those under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), before a Delhi court in a case related to terrorism and secessionist activities in the Kashmir valley in 2017.
The court will hear on May 19 the arguments on the quantum of the sentence under which Malik may get a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.
NIA Judge recently, while passing the order said, “The analysis reflects that the statements of witnesses and documentary evidence have connected almost all the accused with each other and to a common object of secession, to the commonality of means they were to use, their close association to terrorist/ terrorist organizations under the guiding hand and funding of Pakistani establishment.”
Malik was also charged with Section 18 (conspiracy to commit terrorist act), and 20 (being member of terrorist gang or organisation) of the UAPA and sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 124-A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code.
The chargesheet was also filed against Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed and Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, who have been declared proclaimed offenders (PO) in the terror case.
The court, meanwhile, formally framed the charges against other 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 Kapoor.
