India’s top anti-terrorism investigation agency Friday again sought the death sentence for Kashmiri independence leader Muhammad Yasin Malik after he was given life in prison, official sources said.
Malik, 57, chief of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was sentenced to life imprisonment last year in a terror funding case after his refusal to accept a government-appointed lawyer or to defend himself against the charges.
The court turned down a plea by the National Investigation Agency for a death sentence, saying capital punishment was for a crime that “shocks the collective consciousness” of society.
On Friday, the NIA petitioned the High Court in New Delhi again seeking a death sentence for Malik, a senior security official in Indian Illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir told AFP.
The petition is due for hearing on Monday, legal news website Bar and Bench reported.
Malik was repeatedly jailed, spending 14 years in prison where he claimed he was tortured, and was finally arrested in 2018, months before New Delhi cancelled the occupied region’s special status, imposing a lockdown and communications blockade lasting months.
