Yasin Malik trial: SC asks J&K HC registrar to ensure proper VC facilities

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the registrar general of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court to ensure proper video conferencing facilities at a special court in Jammu hearing the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases involving jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik and others.

The top court also directed the registrar general of the Delhi High Court to ensure proper video conferencing facilities at Tihar jail also where Malik is lodged in connection with another terror financing case.

The bench has asked both the high court registrars to file their status reports on February 18 and fixed the plea of CBI for hearing on February 21.

A bench comprising Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan was hearing a plea of the CBI seeking the transfer of the trials in the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases from Jammu to New Delhi so that Malik is not needed to be taken to the special court there.

The top court on December 18, last year had given six accused two weeks to respond to the CBI's plea to transfer the trial the cases.

One case relates to the killing of four Indian Air Force personnel on January 25, 1990 in Srinagar and the other to the abduction of Sayeed, daughter of then union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, on December 8, 1989.

Malik, chief of the banned organisation JKLF, is facing trial in both cases.

The top court was hearing a CBI plea against the September 20, 2022 order of a Jammu trial court directing Malik, serving a life term in Tihar jail, to be produced before it physically to cross-examine prosecution witnesses in the Sayeed case.

The CBI said Malik was a threat to national security and cannot be allowed to be taken outside the Tihar jail premises.

Sayeed, who was freed five days after her abduction when the then BJP-backed V P Singh government at the Centre released five terrorists in exchange, now lives in Tamil Nadu. She is a prosecution witness for the CBI, which took over the case in early 1990s.

Malik has been lodged in Tihar jail after he was sentenced by a special NIA court in May 2023 in a terror-funding case.