STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave six accused two weeks to respond to the CBI’s plea to transfer the trial in the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases from Jammu to New Delhi.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Manmohan took note of the fact that the six accused have not filed their replies to the Central Bureau of Investigation’s plea and asked them to do the needful in two weeks. It listed the case for further hearing on January 20, 2025.
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 Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, on December 8, 1989.
Yasin Malik, chief of the banned organisation JKLF, is facing trial in both cases.
While Malik has filed his response, six of the other 10 accused are yet to file their replies to the CBI plea.
“If trial is to be transferred then all accused have to be heard,” the bench said.
One accused Mohammed Rafiq Pahloo passed away and the trial against him stood abated, the bench was informed.
Besides Malik and Pahloo, 10 persons were made party to the CBI’s plea.
On November 28, the top court sought a response from Yasin Malik and others on the CBI’s plea to transfer the trial.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench that Malik need not be physically taken to Jammu court for trial in the kidnapping case as Tihar jail has a court with video-conferencing facilities.
The top court was hearing a CBI plea against the September 20, 2022 order of a Jammu trial court directing Malik, serving a life term in Tihar jail, to be produced before it physically to cross-examine prosecution witnesses in the Rubaiya Sayeed case.
The CBI said Malik was a threat to national security and cannot be allowed to be taken outside the Tihar jail premises.
Rubaiya Sayeed, who was freed five days after her abduction when the then BJP-backed V P Singh government at the Centre released five terrorists in exchange, now lives in Tamil Nadu. She is a prosecution witness for the CBI, which took over the case in early 1990s.
Malik has been lodged in Tihar jail after he was sentenced by a special NIA court in May 2023 in a terror-funding case.