NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR (Reuters) – An Indian court on Wednesday ordered life in jail for Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik for funding “terrorist” activities and other charges, a judge said, prompting street protests outside the politician’s residence.
Malik, head of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), earlier told a special court designated for the National Investigation Agency that he had been following Gandhian principles and non-violent politics in Kashmir after giving up arms in the 1990s.
Mainly Hindu India has been fighting an armed militancy in Kashmir, also claimed by Pakistan, for decades.
“Life imprisonment sentence to the convict, Yasin Malik,” Special Judge Parveen Singh said in the court in New Delhi.
Malik’s wife Mushaal Hussein Mullick said the sentencing was illegitimate.
“Verdict in minutes by Indian kangaroo court,” . “The iconic leader will never surrender.”
In Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar, police fired tear gas and pellets to disperse stone-pelting protesters outside Malik’s residence.
Malik was convicted last week.
(Reporting by Suchitra Mohanty in New Delhi and Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar)
