New Delhi (Web Desk): An Indian court on Wednesday sentenced Kashmiri freedom fighter Yasin Malik to life imprisonment in a terror funding case.
“Life imprisonment sentence to the convict, Yasin Malik,” Special Judge Parveen Singh said in the court in New Delhi.
According to the Indian media, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had sought the death penalty for the Kashmiri leader and chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), but the court awarded him two life imprisonments.
The NIA court handed down two life sentences and five 10-year terms of rigorous imprisonment, which will run concurrently. Moreover, a penalty of ₹1million has also been slapped on the Kashmiri leader.
The Hurriyat leader was convicted in the terror-funding case last week after he pleaded guilty to all the charges last Tuesday, including the ones under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
Yasin had refused to contest the charges, including Section 16 (terrorist act), Section 17 (raising funds for a terrorist act), Section 18 (conspiracy to commit a terrorist act) and Section 20 (being a member of a terrorist gang or organisation) of the UAPA and Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 124-A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code.
Malik’s wife Mushaal Hussein Mullick said the sentencing was illegitimate.
The Indian government arrested Yasin Malik in 2019, the same year when the special status of Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir was revoked.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari strongly condemned the sentencing of the Kashmiri leader.