A court in Srinagar on Wednesday restarted the trial of former militant Farooq Ahmed Dar (Bitta Karate), who had on camera admitted to killing 20 Kashmiri Pandits during the 1990s.
The hearing in the case began after nearly 31 years following a plea by the family of Satish Tickoo, one of the victims.
Bitta Karate was arrested along with his associates by Indian forces in June 1990 from Srinagar and detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and had over 19 militancy-related cases against him.
He remained under arrest for 16 years and was eventually released on bail in 2006.
A Kashmiri Pandit organization had also moved a curative petition in the Supreme Court seeking a probe either by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the mass murders of Kashmiri Pandits during 1989-90.
The plea sought prosecution of Yasin Malik and Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate, Javed Ahmed Dar and others, for hundreds of FIRs of murders of Kashmiri Pandits during 1989-90, 1997 and 1998, and which are lying uninvestigated by J&K Police even after nearly three decades.
Farooq Ahmed Dar is currently lodged in the Tihar Jail. In July 2017, he was arrested along with six others on accusation of receiving funds from Pakistan.
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