The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that separatist leader Yasin Malik was in “contact with the top leadership of Pakistan, including the Prime Minister, the President, senators of the Pakistani Senate, and the Chief Ministers of all provinces, and was using such contacts to propagate narratives against India and to further the secessionist agenda in Jammu & Kashmir”.
The agency, which has sought enhancing his life sentence in a terror funding case to death penalty, argued that taking names of senior politicians and bureaucrats does not absolve or negate his links with militants like Hafiz Saeed. The NIA made the submission in a rejoinder filed before the high court.
A Bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja took the NIA’s rejoinder on record and listed the case for hearing on July 21. The Bench also told Malik, who was virtually appearing from Tihar jail, that a copy of the rejoinder would be supplied to him through the jail authorities.
In his reply filed to the NIA’s appeal, Malik had earlier said that he spent nearly three decades as a key figure in a State-sanctioned “backchannel” mechanism, working with a succession of Prime Ministers, intelligence chiefs, and even business tycoons to foster peace in Jammu and Kashmir.
