Pakistan on Friday summoned India’s Charge d’Affaires in Islamabad to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) and handed over a demarche conveying the Pakistan government's concern over the deteriorating health condition of Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik.
Malik is lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail where he began in an indefinite hunger strike on July 22. He was on Wednesday admitted to Delhi's Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital following a fluctuation in his blood pressure.
India's Deputy High Commissioner M Suresh Kumar, who is designated as the Charge d'Affaires, was told about Pakistan’s deep dismay over the Indian authorities’ latest move of implicating Malik in "two more bogus cases crafted around incidents that happened at least three decades ago," the Foreign Office said in a statement.
It further said, "A letter addressed to the Indian Prime Minister from Ms Mushaal Hussein Mullick, wife of Yasin Malik, seeking her husband’s immediate release from prison in view of his precarious health condition that aggravated after his decision to go on a hunger-strike earlier this month, was also handed over to the Cd'A."
Given the urgency of the situation and keeping in view Malik's sharply deteriorating health indicators, the Government of India has been strongly urged to provide him urgent medical care, immediately release him from prison, cancel his "fallacious" conviction and withdraw all other cases against him, the Foreign Office statement said.
Malik, the chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), is an accused in the case of abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed. He is on hunger strike after the Indian government did not respond to his plea that he be allowed to physically appear in a Jammu court hearing the case.
Rubaiya was abducted in 1989 by terrorists. Malik is accused to be among the JKLF terrorists who abducted her. Rubaiya appeared in a court on July 15 and identified Malik and three others as her abductors.
"This is the person and his name is Yasin Malik. He was the man who threatened me that he would drag me out of the minibus if I refused to follow their diktat," said Rubaiya to the judge.
Malik was arrested in early 2019 in a 2017 terror-funding case registered by National Investigation Agency (NIA). Malik had pleaded guilty in the case and was given a life sentenced by a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Delhi in May.
In January 2021, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), framed charges against 10 people, including Malik, in Rubaiya's abduction case. In all, there are around 65 criminal cases against Malik related to murder, attempt to murder, rioting and sedition.
(With PTI inputs)
