A special court here on Monday offered legal aid to JKLF chief Yasin Malik, but he turned it down and again insisted on his physical appearance in the hearing on the killing of four Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel in 1990, PTI reported.
Malik appeared in the hearing via video conference from Delhi’s Tihar Jail where he is currently lodged, standing counsel for the CBI Monika Kohli said. Malik, 56, is serving a life sentence in a ‘terror-funding’ case.
After the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief declined the offer of legal aid, the court asked him to submit his stand in writing on the next date of hearing in the third week of September, Kohli said.
Turning down his plea for physical appearance, the court said there were clear directions from the high court for producing the accused in all cases through video conferencing.
However, the court offered him legal aid but he declined, the CBI counsel said.
Malik observed a 10-day hunger strike from July 22 after the Centre did not respond to his plea for allowing him to physically appear in a Jammu court hearing the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction case in which he is an accused.
Kohli is the chief prosecutor in the two key cases against Malik — the 1989 abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, and the killing of four IAF personnel — which had taken place when militancy broke out in Kashmir Valley.
She has been representing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as a retainer counsel in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court since 2015. (PTI)