Yasin Malik's Supreme Court appearance creates flutter, Centre raises concerns

The presence of jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik, serving a life term in Tihar jail, in a packed courtroom created a flutter in the Supreme Court on Friday.

Malik, who is in jail following his conviction and life sentence in a terror funding case, was brought to the high-security apex court premises in a prison van escorted by armed security personnel without the court's permission.

He walked into the courtroom to the utter surprise of all present.

Voicing surprise at his presence, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta that there was a procedure for high-risk convicts to be allowed into the courtroom to argue their case personally.

The bench was hearing a CBI appeal against the September 20, 2022 order of a trial court in Jammu in the 1989 kidnapping case of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of then union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, allowing Malik to personally appear in court and cross-examine the witnesses.

The CBI had told the court that Malik, the top leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, was a threat to national security and cannot be allowed to be taken outside the Tihar jail premises.