New Delhi

The Special NIA Judge Praveen Singh on Wednesday while sentencing JKLF leader Yasin Malik to life imprisonment in a terror funding case said, in his opinion, there was no reformation of the convict. "It may be correct that the convict may have given up the gun in the year 1994, but he had never expressed any regret for the violence he had committed prior to the year 1994 and still remained engaged in violent acts," the judge said.

"It is to be noticed that, when he claimed to have given up the path of violence after the year 1994, the government of India took it upon its face value and gave him an opportunity to reform and in good faith, tried to engage in a meaningful dialogue with him and as admitted by him, gave him every platform to express his opinion, said NIA Judge Praveen Singh.

"I must observe here that the convict cannot invoke the Mahatma and claim to be his follower because, in Mahatma Gandhi's principles, there was no place for violence, howsoever high the objective might be. It only took one small incident of violence at Chauri Chaura for the Mahatma to call off the entire non-cooperation movement but the convict despite large scale of violence engulfing the valley neither condemned the violence nor withdrew his calendar of protest which had led to the said violence," the court further observed.

The NIA court further said that the crimes for which Malik was convicted were of a very serious nature. These crimes were intended to strike at the heart of the idea of India and intended to forcefully secede J-K from the Union of India.

 The crime becomes more serious as it was committed with the assistance of foreign powers and designated terrorists. The seriousness of the crime is further increased by the fact that it was committed behind the smokescreen of an alleged peaceful political movement, added the court.

The manner of the commission of the crime, and the kind of weaponry used in the crime lead me to a conclusion that the crime in question would fail the test of rarest of rare cases, NIA Judge Praveen Singh said.

 The NIA also stated before the court that this has been done for funding separatist and terrorist activities in J&K and as such, they have entered into a larger conspiracy for causing disruption in the valley by way of pelting stones on security forces, systematically burning schools, damage to public property and waging war against India.

The court observed that had there been no funding from Pakistan, violence at this scale could not have been committed in the Kashmir Valley.

Special NIA Judge Praveen Singh observed that financing is the backbone of any operation, including terrorist activities. In the present case, the order on charge specifies how funds were raised and how they were received from the Pakistani establishment as well as designated terrorist Hafeez Saeed and through other hawala operations.

These funds were used to create unrest where under the guise of public protests, paid terror activities of stone-pelting and arson on a mass scale were committed, the court said in the order.