india

Updated: Oct 23, 2019 22:40 IST

The TADA court on Wednesday read out charges to terrorist-turned-separatist leader Yasin Malik through video conference. The court has fixed November 5 as the next date of hearing.

Malik, the founder of banned Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, is presently lodged in Tihar Jail for allegedly killing four Indian Air Force personnel and kidnapping Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of the then home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in 1989-90.

The TADA court, on September 7, had issued non-bailable warrants against Malik and seven others allegedly involved in the killing of four IAF personnel in Kashmir in 1990, when an armed insurgency had broken out.

Special public prosecutor of the CBI, advocate Pavittar Singh Bhardwaj said, “Five of the accused were present before the court but Yasin Malik and Showkat Ahmed Bakshi could not be presented.”

“Bakshi, who had been booked under the Public Safety Act, was believed to be lodged in Central Jail, Srinagar. But when the details were cross checked on the orders of the court, it emerged that he had been shifted to some other prison. The court then issued orders to find out his whereabout. He will be presented on the next date of hearing either personally or through his counsel,” said Bhardwaj.

Several separatists have been shifted to prisons outside the state recently. “Yasin’s counsel was present before the court but because of Showkat Ahmad Bakshi, the court deferred the case to November 5. Law requires presence of all the accused through personal appearances or through their counsels to conduct the proceedings,” he said.

The court also asked Malik whether he had any objection to the charges being read out to him, said Bhardwaj, adding that the court informed him that his counsel was also present in the court room.

“Once all the accused are produced before the court, prosecution will prove the charges and thereafter court will ask them if they admit them or deny them. But there is a water tight case against them,” he added.

68-year old Shalini Khanna, also known as Nirmal Khanna, wife of squadron leader Ravi Khanna, who was one of the four slain IAF personnel, has demanded that justice be delivered to her and Malik be sent to the gallows.

“Yasin Malik not only murdered squadron leader Ravi Khanna but also murdered my mother-in-law, my father-in-law and my mother. The childhood of my children was lost,” Shalini Khanna had told Hindustan Times.

In its 27-page judgement in April this year, justice Sanjay Kumar Gupta vacated an order by a single bench of the high court, which had stayed trial against Malik in 1995, besides observing that the October 25, 2008 order of special TADA court of Jammu allowing Malik's petition for shifting trial to Srinagar was not correct.

Malik was granted a stay on trial by a single bench of the Jammu and Kashmir high court in 1995 as there was no TADA court in Srinagar. Malik was a JKLF terrorist before he gave up arms in the mid-1990s.

The first case relates to an incident that occurred on January 25, 1990 at Rawalpora, Srinagar. The Air Force employees were fired upon by terrorists in which 40 of them, including a woman, received serious injuries and four IAF personnel were killed.

A chargesheet was filed on August 31, 1990 against Malik and five others before the designated TADA Court in Jammu.