The Tihar Jail administration on Friday ordered a detailed probe into the lapses over separatist leader Yasin Malik being produced physically in the Supreme Court.
Director General (Prisons) Sanjay Beniwal ordered a detailed inquiry in the matter to be conducted by deputy inspector general (HQ) (Prisons) Rajiv Singh to “fix the responsibility of erring officials”. The report is to be submitted within the next three days.
Yasin Malik, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader who is serving life imprisonment in a terror funding case, appeared before the top court under police escort. The episode prompted Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to write to Union home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla, terming it as a ‘major security laps. Mehta sought action on how the separatist leader was allowed to step out in the absence of any order or authorisation from court warranting his presence.
The solicitor general urged the home secretary to take the matter seriously and take suitable action as Malik is not an ordinary person but a man with terror and secessionist background who was convicted in a terror funding case last year.
He did not rule out the possibility of the convict escaping, being forcibly taken away or getting killed, given his links to terrorist organisation in Pakistan.
Malik had arrived in court to appear in an appeal filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, challenging a September 2022 order passed by a TADA court in Jammu which required his personal presence in the trial relating to killing of four Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel in Srinagar in 1990 and the 1989 abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The Supreme Court on April 24 had stayed this order, thereby issuing notice to the respondents, including Yasin Malik to appear either in person or through an authorised lawyer. However, the order did not provide for his personal presence.
