Yasin Malik’s ‘frail health’ will get exacerbated with hunger strike: Former Minister

Hopes Investigating Agencies Understand JKLF Chief
Srinagar: Former minister in erstwhile PDP-BJP coalition and close ally of the saffron party Sajad Gani Lone on Sunday expressed “hope” that investigating agencies understand JKLF Chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik who he said “had frail health all along which gets exacerbated with hunger strike.”
“My thoughts r with Yasin Malik. He has had frail health all along which gets exacerbated with hunger strike. hope investigating agencies understand Yasin Malik. Haven’t met him for a decade. Politics apart— have spent great moments with him,” Sajad, who heads Peoples Conference, tweeted.
Yasin Malik is seriously ill as his condition inside jail has deteriorated following his prolonged hunger strike, his mother and sister said at a news conference in Srinagar on Saturday.
Family alleged that Malik’s health deteriorated after he went on a hunger strike to protest against “illegal” detention by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
A New Delhi court had on April 10 sent Malik to NIA custody till April 22 in connection with an alleged funding case.
Malik’s family said they were not allowed to meet the separatist leader and that he has been in a hospital for the past four days.
“We had gone to Jammu to meet him (Malik), but when we reached there in the evening, we heard that he has been taken to Delhi. So we returned without meeting him. Since then, we are only in touch with his lawyer. The lawyer, Raja Tufail, was also not allowed to meet Malik,” they alleged.
The family said Tufail had to get court permission to meet the JKLF leader on Saturday.
“It was then that they (NIA officials) were forced to tell him (lawyer) that Malik was ‘very ill’ as he (Malik) had been on a hunger strike since April 10 and was admitted to a hospital on April 16. The jail authorities had not informed us about his health condition,” they said.
Reacting to the news, Hurriyat (M) chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said that Malik’s well being is the responsibility of the state under whose direction he was detained and slapped with PSA. “Deeply disturbed by the sudden news about Yasin Malik being seriously ill & shifted to hospital in New Delhi. As no one is allowed to meet him details are not yet known. His safety & well being is the responsibility of the state under whose detention he is arrested & slapped with PSA,” Mirwaiz tweeted.
In a statement, a Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) spokesman said the “illegally detained JKLF chairman is in a serious condition” in Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Delhi.
“After getting court permission, his (Malik) lawyer was contacted by NIA officials this morning and asked to come to the said hospital where the lawyer found that Malik was on a hunger strike. The JKLF chairman started his hunger strike against the “callous approach of NIA, a day after he was shifted to New Delhi and handed over to the agency,” the spokesman said.He also warned the Centre of “serious consequences” if anything untoward happened to Malik.
Malik was brought to the national capital after a special NIA court in Jammu gave the go-ahead for his custodial interrogation by the probe agency. The JKLF chief was taken into preventive custody in February by the J&K police and lodged in Jammu’s Kot Balwal jail.
Malik, whose organisation JKLF was banned last month by the Centre, is also facing two CBI cases. These relate to the kidnapping of Rubaiya Saeed, daughter of the Union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, in 1989, and the killing of four IAF personnel in 1990.