Onlykashmir.in News Desk
Jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik has told a Srinagar court that he will no longer contest the proceedings against him in the 1990 killing of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat, asking instead that he be awarded capital punishment if found guilty, even as he continues to deny involvement in the killing.
In a 25 page submission filed through his counsel before the Additional Sessions Judge handling TADA and POTA matters in Srinagar, Malik said his decision to stop contesting the proceedings should not be construed as an admission of guilt or an acceptance of the allegations levelled against him, a distinction his submission was careful to draw even as it sought the harshest possible penalty.
The submission comes months after the State Investigation Agency filed a chargesheet in June naming Malik and four others in connection with the abduction and killing of Bhat, who was working as a nurse at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences when she was abducted in April 1990, at the height of militancy related violence in the valley. Her killing has remained one of the defining, unresolved cases from that period, periodically resurfacing in public discourse around justice for victims of the early 1990s.
Malik has questioned the evidence relied upon by investigators and disputed the circumstances under which the case has been revived more than three decades after the killing, raising procedural objections even as he has chosen not to formally contest the trial itself. According to reports, the court has listed the matter for the prosecution’s response on September 19, setting up the next stage in proceedings that are likely to draw sustained public and legal attention.
Malik has been lodged in Tihar Jail since 2019, having previously been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in a separate case involving terror financing. The Sarla Bhat case represents a fresh and distinct legal challenge, tied specifically to one of the most painful chapters of Kashmir’s early militancy years, when a wave of targeted killings triggered the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley.
The case’s revival, and Malik’s unusual legal strategy of seeking the maximum punishment while simultaneously denying guilt, is likely to keep the Sarla Bhat killing, and the broader question of accountability for crimes from that era, in continued public and judicial focus in the weeks ahead.
