NEW DELHI, Jan 20: The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the registrar general of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court to ensure adequate video conferencing facilities at a special court in Jammu, where trials related to the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout are being heard. These cases involve jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik and others.
The court also directed the registrar general of the Delhi High Court to ensure proper video conferencing facilities at Tihar Jail, where Malik is currently lodged in connection with another terror financing case. The bench, consisting of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan, instructed both high court registrars to submit status reports by February 18 and scheduled the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) plea for hearing on February 21.
The CBI has filed a plea seeking the transfer of the trials from Jammu to New Delhi to avoid Malik’s physical transport to the special court. The cases involve serious charges, including the abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then-Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, in 1989, and the killing of four Indian Air Force personnel in Srinagar in 1990. Malik, the chief of the banned JKLF, is facing trial in both cases.
The Supreme Court was addressing a CBI plea challenging a September 2022 Jammu trial court order, which had directed Malik, who is serving a life term in Tihar Jail, to be produced physically to cross-examine prosecution witnesses. The CBI argued that Malik posed a threat to national security and should not be taken outside the jail premises.
Sayeed, who was released after five days of captivity in exchange for the release of five terrorists by the BJP-backed V.P. Singh government, is now a key prosecution witness in the case. Malik, convicted in a separate terror funding case in May 2023, remains incarcerated in Tihar Jail.
