NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Registrar General of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court to ensure availability of video conferencing facility at a special court in Jammu, which is hearing the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases involving jailed JKLF chief Yasin Malik and others.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan passed the order to ensure proper VC facility for Malik to participate virtually in the court hearing.
The court also asked the Registrar technology of the Delhi High Court to check whether the VC facility at Tihar jail is working properly.
Malik is currently lodged in Tihar jail in Delhi in connection with another terror financing case. The CBI filed a plea in the top court, aggrieved with the Jammu court's order to produce him physically for cross examination of witnesses. The agency should shifting of the trial to New Delhi.
During the hearing, the bench asked the CBI to show the court that Malik has refused to appear through video conferencing.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the CBI, said it is recorded in the order passed by the trial court.
"The judge says that the VC system is not working properly," the bench said.
Referring to the trial court order, Mehta said it says that accused number 1 (Malik) denied cross-examining the prosecution witness through virtual mode and has insisted on his physical presence before the court so that he can cross-examine the witnesses of the prosecution.
Mehta said the order also recorded that the accused number 1, does not want to engage any counsel nor does he want the services of any advocate.
In its order, the court said, “The observations made by a third additional judge, Jammu, at two places recorded that the VC system in his court is not functioning properly. We direct the registrar general of Jammu and Kashmir to look into what is stated by the judge and take immediate steps for installing a proper system through which hearing can be properly conducted by using the medium of video conferencing”.
The court said the system should be such that there can be effective cross-examination.
The court asked the Registrar General to do the needful and submit a report lafter deputing another registrar to examine the duly installed system, by February 18, 2025.
The court fixed the matter for hearing on February 21, 2025.
The CBI sought transfer of the trials in the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the 1990 Srinagar shootout cases from Jammu to New Delhi so that Malik is not needed to be taken to the special court there.
In December, last year, the apex court had given six accused two weeks to respond to the CBI's plea to transfer the trial of the cases. 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 Sayeed, daughter of then union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, on December 8, 1989.
The CBI claimed that Malik was a threat to national security and cannot be allowed to be taken outside the Tihar jail premises.
