Jailed Yasin Malik seriously ill, shifted to hospital: Family

Srinagar: Kashmiri separatist leader Muhammad Yasin Malik has fallen seriously ill and has been shifted to a hospital from Delhi’s Tihar Jail where he was on a hungerstrike for past many days, his family claimed on Saturday.

While addressing the media here, Mr Malik’s mother and sisters said that they have been informed by their lawyer that he (Malik) has been shifted to hospital in view of his serious condition. “In fact, the authorities were forced to inform his lawyer that his condition is very serious for he has been on hunger strike for past twelve days against him being sent on illegal remand,” one of his sisters said.

As soon as the news about Mr Malik’s illness spread, traders in Srinagar’s Maisuma area and its neighbourhood downed their shutters as mark of protest.

Mr Malik, who is the chairman of the main faction of pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) was detained by the J&K police under the State’s stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) and shifted to Kot Balwal jail in the peripheries of winter capital Jammu in March this year.

Subsequently, he shifted to the Tihar Jail as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) court had issued a production warrant against him. The NIA had sought his remand for custodial interrogation in an alleged terror funding case.

Mr Malik is also facing charges of kidnapping and murder for being allegedly involved in abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, in 1989 and killing of four Indian Air Force personnel in the early part of 1990. The J&K high court has reserved its judgment on a plea of the CBI for re-opening three-decade-old cases. The JKLF was recently banned by the home ministry under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.