Amid Indian government’s move to seek death sentence for incarcerated Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik, his wife Mushaal Mullick has said that the entire world would react if any harm came to her husband.
She said Indian government was trying to commit a “judicial murder” of her husband and warned that such a move will trigger a reaction from across the world.
She made these remarks while speaking to the media at Lahore’s Jinnah House on Thursday, which was ransacked and torched by protesters following Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan’s arrest on May 9.
Demanding exemplary punishment for Jinnah house attackers, the Kashmiri leader called the vandals “terrorists”.
Speaking on the occasion, she also slammed India’s top anti-terrorism investigation agency reported move to again seek the death sentence for Kashmiri independence leader Malik after he was given life in prison.
“I want to convey a message to Modi [Indian prime minister] that the Kashmiri nation is not afraid of death,” she remarked.
She said the entire world would react if anything happened to her husband and added that the Modi-led government knew that the Kashmir freedom movement cannot be suppressed by hanging Malik.
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 Indian 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.
— With additional input from AFP