Trial of Yasin Malik: SC asks J&K HC registrar to ensure proper video conferencing facilities at Jammu court

The top court also directed the registrar general of the Delhi High Court to ensure proper video conferencing facilities at Tihar jail also where Malik is lodged in connection with another terror financing case.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday directed the registrar general of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court to ensure that the video conferencing facility is available at a special court in Jammu, which is hearing the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases involving jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik and others.

A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan issued the direction to ensure proper VC facility for Malik to participate virtually in the court hearing and also asked the registrar technology of the Delhi High Court to check whether the VC facility at Tihar jail is working properly.

Malik is currently lodged in Tihar jail in Delhi in connection with another terror financing case. The CBI was aggrieved with the Jammu court's order to produce him physically for cross examination of witnesses.

During the hearing, the bench asked the CBI to show the court that Malik has refused to appear through video conferencing. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the CBI, said it is recorded in the order passed by the trial court.

The court, however, said, “The judge says that the VC system is not working properly".

Citing the trial court order, Mehta said the order says that accused number 1 (Malik) denied cross-examining the prosecution witness through virtual mode and has insisted on his physical presence before the court so that he can cross-examine the witnesses of the prosecution.

Mehta said the order also recorded that the accused number 1, does not want to engage any counsel nor does he want the services of any advocate.

In its order, the court said, “The observations made by a third additional judge, Jammu, at two places recorded that the VC system in his court is not functioning properly. We direct the registrar general of Jammu and Kashmir to look into what is stated by the judge and take immediate steps for installing a proper system through which hearing can be properly conducted by using the medium of video conferencing”.

The court said the system should be such that there can be effective cross-examination.

The registrar general should do the needful and submit a report to this court after deputing another registrar to examine the duly installed system, by February 18, 2025.

The court scheduled the matter for hearing on February 21, 2025.

The CBI sought transfer of the trials in the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases from Jammu to New Delhi so that Malik is not needed to be taken to the special court there.

In December, last year, the apex court had given six accused two weeks to respond to the CBI's plea to transfer the trial of the cases. One case relates to the killing of four Indian Air Force personnel on January 25, 1990 in Srinagar and the other to the abduction of Sayeed, daughter of then union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, on December 8, 1989. Malik, chief of the banned organisation JKLF, is facing trial in both cases.

The CBI filed the instant plea against an order passed in September 2022, by a trial court in Jammu, directing Malik, serving a life term in Tihar jail, to be produced before it physically to cross-examine prosecution witnesses in the Sayeed case. The central agency had stressed that Malik was a threat to national security and cannot be allowed to be taken outside the Tihar jail premises.