New Delhi: Separatist leader Yasin Malik launched a hunger strike inside his cell at Tihar jail in the national capital, prison officials noted.
Malik’s sister Abida said while addressing the press in Srinagar that she had received a will from the former chief of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) after she met him in prison last week.
In the will, Malik reiterated that he had perceived non-violent struggle as a “powerful force.”
His sister also said that she and her mother had tried convincing the 56-year-old to not go through with the hunger strike, but he refused.
“He (Malik) said this is his last resort and called it a farewell,” Abida added.
Malik began his strike on Friday morning in Tihar’s Jail No. 7 claiming his case is not being properly investigated. According to reports, top jail officials talked to Malik and tried to persuade him to call off the strike but he refused.
Notably, the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik told a CBI court that he wants to cross-question witnesses in the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case himself else he would go on a hunger strike earlier this month. The case relates to the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, by JKLF on December 8, 1989.
Yasin Malik is undergoing a life sentence in a terror funding case. He was arrested in 2019 in connection with the 2017 terror-funding case registered by National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Malik informed the court about his request to cross-examine the witnesses himself in the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case and said he would not hesitate to start a hunger strike if the government doesn’t accept his plea. The JKLF chief told the court that he would wait for the government’s response till July 22 after which he would start his indefinite hunger strike, the officials noted.
