In his strongly worded letter, the Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta highlighted the "serious security lapse" of Yasin Malik's physical appearance in the court.
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ON Friday, the Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta wrote a strongly worded letter to the Union home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla flagging the issue of "serious security lapse" upon the physical appearance in the court of Yasin Malik, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader.
Malik is already serving life imprisonment in a terror funding case and made an appearance in an appeal filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) assailing orders of a special court in Jammu whereby a fresh production warrant was issued for his physical appearance.
The Bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta was taken aback upon seeing Malik appear in person before them despite no Order seeking physical appearance having been passed by the court.
After the hearing was over, Mehta immediately shot off the letter stating that Malik's presence in the Supreme Court was a matter of grave security lapse since the convicted terrorist "could have escaped or could have been killed" while being brought to the court.
"It is my firm view that this is a serious security lapse. A person with terrorist and secessionist background like Mr Yasin Malik who is not only a convict in terror funding case but has known connections with terror organisations in Pakistan could have escaped, could have been forcibly taken away or could have been killed," Mehta said in his letter.
Mehta also asserted that even the security of the Supreme Court had been put at serious risk due to Malik's unsolicited presence on its premises.
"In any view of the matter, so long as the Order under Section 268 of The Code Criminal Procedure (CrPC) subsists, jail authorities had no power to bring him out of jail premises nor did they have any reason to do so," Mehta added.
As per Section 268 of CrPC, a state government may, at any time, by general or special Order, direct that any person or class of persons shall not be removed from the prison in which he or they may be confined or detained, and thereupon, so long as the Order remains in force, no Order made under Section 267, whether before or after the Order of the state government, shall have effect in respect of such person or class of persons.
Section 267 enables the criminal court to Order for the presence of a person confined or detained in a prison, during the course of inquiry, trial or any other proceedings, for answering to a charge of an offence or for giving evidence, as the case may be.
The Tihar jail administration has now ordered a detailed inquiry into the matter to be conducted by deputy inspector general (HQ) (Prisons) Rajiv Singh to "fix the responsibility of erring officials".