Yasin Malik enters a guilty plea in a terrorism case before a Delhi court in 2017

*Paromita Das

Mohammad Yasin Malik, the separatist leader of Jammu and Kashmir, pleaded guilty to all charges, including those under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), before a Delhi court on Tuesday in a case involving alleged terrorism and secessionist activities that shook the Valley in 2017.

According to sources quoted by news agency PTI, Malik told the court that he was not contesting the charges leveled against him, which included sections 16 (terrorist act), 17 (raising funds for the terrorist act), 18 (conspiracy to commit terrorist act), and 20 (being member of terrorist gang or organization) of the UAPA and sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 124-A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code.
Special Judge Praveen Singh, who previously ruled that it was “prima facie” established that Malik and others were direct recipients of terror funds, will hear arguments on May 19 regarding the quantum of sentence for the charges leveled against the accused, for which the maximum punishment is life imprisonment.

The court also stated that Malik had established an elaborate structure and mechanism around the world to raise funds for terrorist and other illegal activities in Jammu and Kashmir in the name of the “freedom struggle.”
Meanwhile, the court formally charged Kashmiri separatist leaders such as Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate, Shabbir Shah, Masarat Alam, Md Yusuf Shah, Aftab Ahmad Shah, Altaf Ahmad Shah, Nayeem Khan, Md Akbar Khanday, Raja Mehrajuddin Kalwal, Bashir Ahmad Bhat, Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali, Shabir Ahmad Shah, Abdul Rashid Sheikh, and Naval Ki

The charge sheet was also filed against the case’s proclaimed offenders (PO), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed and Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin. The judge had previously stated that “a pattern is emerging — Pakistan or its agencies and accused share a common goal and there is an agreement on the means to be used for achieving that goal, and terror funding is also being provided from Pakistan.” The court stated in the conspiracy, “the baton was held by conductors sitting across the border in the form of Pakistani agencies such as ISI and each of the conspirators, knowing every other conspirator, was playing his role as per the directions of the conductor in order to create a symphony of bloodshed, violence, mayhem, and destruction with the ultimate object of secession of J&K.”

According to the report, the money for terror funding was sent from and by Pakistan and its agencies, and even the diplomatic mission was used to carry out the evil plan. Terror funding money was also sent by proclaimed international terrorists, including accused Hafiz Saeed. It stated that a criminal conspiracy was hatched with the ultimate goal of secession of Jammu and Kashmir from the Union of India, and that within that conspiracy, a conspiracy was hatched to commit certain acts in order to achieve the original conspiracy’s goal, and that those acts, as discussed above, were found to be terrorist acts.

The court also stated that there appeared to be a criminal conspiracy behind the large-scale protests, which resulted in massive violence and arson. It claimed that accused Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali was one of the main conduits for the flow of terror funding and that accused Naval Kishore Kapoor played an active role in facilitating it. According to the NIA, various terrorist organizations, including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and others, perpetrated violence in the valley by attacking civilians and security forces with the support of Pakistan’s ISI.

It was also claimed that the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) was formed in 1993 to provide a political front for secessionist activities.
According to the NIA charge sheet, the central government received credible information that Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Amir of Jammat-ud-Dawah, and the secessionist and separatist leaders, including members of the Hurriyat Conference, were conspiring with active militants of proscribed terrorist organizations such as HM, LeT, and others to raise, receive, and collect funds domestically and abroad through various illegal channels including haw

The NIA also claimed that this was done to fund separatist and terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir, and that as a result, they have joined a larger conspiracy to cause disruption in the valley by pelting stones on security forces, systematically burning schools, causing damage to public property, and waging war against India.