Today, On 20th January, The Supreme Court directed the Jammu and Kashmir High Court registrar to ensure proper video conferencing (VC) facilities at the Jammu court for the trial of Yasin Malik. The bench also asked the registrars to submit their status reports by February 18. The CBI’s plea regarding the case has been scheduled for hearing on February 21.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court instructed the registrar general of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court to ensure adequate video conferencing facilities at a special court in Jammu, which is hearing the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases involving jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik and others.
Additionally, the Court directed the registrar general of the Delhi High Court to organize proper video conferencing facilities at Tihar Jail, where Malik is detained in connection with another terror financing case.
The Court ordered,
“We direct Registrar General of High Court of Jammu and Kashmir to look into what is stated and take immediate steps for installing a proper system through which hearing can be conducted by using video medium or video conference. The system should be such that there can be effective cross examination by using the system,”
Also Read: “Gave up arms, I’m a Gandhian Now”: Separatist Yasin Malik to UAPA Tribunal
The bench, consisting of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan, requested both high court registrars to submit status reports by February 18 and scheduled the CBI’s plea for a hearing on February 21.
The bench was considering a plea from the CBI seeking to transfer the trials of the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases from Jammu to New Delhi, to avoid the need for Malik to be transported to the special court. On December 18 of last year, the Supreme Court had granted the six accused two weeks to respond to the CBI’s request for transferring the trial.
One case involves the murder of four Indian Air Force personnel on January 25, 1990, in Srinagar, while the other pertains to the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of the then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, on December 8, 1989.
Yasin Malik, the leader of the banned organization JKLF, is on trial for both incidents.
The Supreme Court was reviewing a CBI plea challenging a September 20, 2022, ruling by a Jammu trial court that ordered Malik, who is serving a life sentence in Tihar Jail, to be physically present for cross-examination of prosecution witnesses in the Sayeed case.
The CBI argued that Malik poses a national security threat and should not be allowed to be taken outside the Tihar Jail premises.
Rubaiya Sayeed was released five days after her kidnapping when the BJP-supported V.P. Singh government at the time agreed to release five terrorists in exchange for her freedom. She currently resides in Tamil Nadu and serves as a prosecution witness for the CBI, which took over the case in the early 1990s. Malik has been incarcerated in Tihar Jail since being sentenced by a special NIA court in May 2023 for a terror financing case.
Case Title: CBI v. Mohd Yasin Malik SLP(Crl) No. 5526-5527/2023
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