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Yasin Malik admitted to hospital after hunger strike in Tihar jail
Yasin Malik, who has been lodged alone in a high-risk cell in Tihar’s jail number 7, is serving a life .sentence in a terror-funding case
Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik who is serving a life term at Tihar jail in a terror-funding case was admitted to the Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital in central Delhi on Tuesday, four days after he went on a hunger strike from Friday, people aware of the development said.
Malik, chief of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was shifted to the hospital in view of fluctuations in his blood pressure.
“The jail doctors noted his BP fluctuating and so referred him to the hospital. He is admitted to the RML hospital. We are getting regular updates from hospital,” said a prison official. On Sunday, the jail authorities shifted him to the medical investigating room and put him on intravenous fluids (IV) after he declined to end his hunger strike.
Malik, who has been lodged alone in a high-risk cell in Tihar’s jail number 7, is serving a life sentence in a terror-funding case. On May 25 this year, a Delhi court sentenced Malik to life imprisonment a week after he pleaded guilty and was convicted of terror funding, spreading terrorism, and secessionist activities in the Kashmir Valley in 2017.
The 56-year-old went on a hunger strike on Friday morning after the union government did not agree to his request that he be allowed to physically appear in a terror case in Jammu in which he is an accused. He was shifted to Tihar jail’s medical investigation room on Sunday where doctors were constantly monitoring his health.
Appearing before a special court in Jammu through video conference on July 13, Malik said he has written to the government for a physical appearance before the special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court, in the case related to the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, in December 1989. He had appeared in connection with the case pertaining to the killing of four Indian Air Force (IAF) officials in 1990.
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On July 15, Rubaiya Sayeed identified Yasin Malik as one of her kidnappers in the high-profile abduction by JKLF in 1989, before a special court in Jammu.
Malik is one of the most guarded prisoners in Tihar jail which has about 20,000 inmates. While convicted prisoners are given work inside the jail and paid for their labour, Yasin Malin was not assigned any job because of security reasons, the prison official quoted above said.
Unlike other convicts, Malik is also not entitled to parole or furlough because he has been convicted under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and Section 121 (waging war against the Government of India) of the Indian Penal Code.
The NIA court while handing down the life sentence noted that Malik’s crimes were “intended to strike at the heart of the idea of India” and were “committed with the assistance of foreign powers and designated terrorists”.
A second Tihar jail officer said Malik has prepared a will and handed it to his family members when they visited him on July 19.
