JKLF condemns implicating Yasin Malik in 36-year-old Sarla Bhat murder case
Islamabad: The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has strongly condemned the Indian move to falsely implicate its illegally incarcerated Chairman, Muhammad Yasin Malik, in the 36-year-old Sarla Bhat murder case.
According to Kashmir Media Service, JKLF chief spokesman and Muhammad Yasin Malik’s Special Representative, Muhammad Rafiq Dar, in a statement issued in Islamabad, said the extremist Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was employing every possible tactic to secure a death sentence to the popular Kashmiri freedom leader by falsely implicating him in fabricated cases with which he had no connection.
He said that after the so-called terror funding case filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Indian Air Force personnel killing case, the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction case and several other similar cases, the Indian authorities have now filed a charge sheet against Muhammad Yasin Malik and some of his close associates in the 36-year-old Sarla Bhat murder case.
Muhammad Rafiq Dar categorically stated that Muhammad Yasin Malik had no involvement whatsoever in the gruesome murder of Sarla Bhat. He termed the BJP-led Indian government’s decision to implicate prominent JKLF leaders, including the incarcerated Yasin Malik, Shaheed Sheikh Abdul Hameed, Shaheed Muhammad Yousuf alias Idrees and Shaheed Ghulam Muhammad Tiploo, in the case as shameful attempt to malign the Kashmiris’ freedom movement.
He said the move exposed the extent to which the so-called democratic India could go to silence the voice of Kashmiri people and eliminate their popular leadership striving for freedom of occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The spokesman said the Indian government’s organised and malicious media campaign against Muhammad Yasin Malik and the JKLF would never succeed in achieving its objectives. Such tactics, he said, could neither diminish Yasin Malik’s popularity among the Kashmiri people nor discredit his peaceful political struggle for the internationally recognized right to self-determination.
He appealed to the international community, local and international human rights organisations, and particularly civil society in India, to come forward and ensure the safety of Muhammad Yasin Malik, promote peace in the region, and facilitate a peaceful and meaningful negotiated settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.
Sarla Bhat, a member of the nursing staff at Soura Hospital in Srinagar, was abducted on April 18, 1990, and was reportedly raped before being murdered on April 19, 1990. KMS-17S
