CBI court in Jammu ‘closes’ Yasin Malik’s right to cross-examine witnesses

Jammu: A special CBI court on Monday closed banned JKLF chief Yasin Malik’s right to cross-examine a prime witness after he refused to do so through video conferencing.

Currently serving a life sentence in Delhi’s Tihar Jail for terror funding, Malik had demanded that he should be allowed to cross-examine witnesses physically in the Jammu court.

CBI counsel Monika Kohli said that when the judge asked Malik on Monday whether he would like to examine V.K. Sharma, a prime witness in the case, he refused and reiterated that he would like to physically question Sharma in court.

“Following his refusal to cross-examine Sharma through virtual mode, the court closed his right to cross-examine Sharma,” Kohli said.

It must be mentioned here that the prime witness Sharma had identified Malik before the examiner-in-chief of the court as well as the CBI as one of the militants involved in the January 25, 1990 killing of four IAF personnel on the outskirts of Srinagar.

Kohli informed the court that the Union Home Ministry had passed an order barring Malik from moving out of Tihar jail for one year from December 22, 2022 because of pending NIA cases against him.

Malik has been charge-sheeted in the case along with six others. The charges were framed against the accused in 2020, 20 years after CBI filed the charge-sheet before a designated TADA court in Jammu.

While four IAF personnel were killed on the spot, nearly 40 others were injured in that firing incident.