New Delhi : The Delhi High Court has issued a notice to Kashmir separatist leader Yasin Malik in response to the National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) appeal seeking the death penalty for him in a terror funding case. 

The NIA approached the High Court after a trial court had sentenced Malik to life imprisonment last year in the same case.

Malik had previously informed the trial court that he was not contesting the charges against him, which included acts of terrorism and sedition under Section 121 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Section 121 carries the maximum punishment of a death sentence.

The High Court, on Monday, stated that since Malik had pleaded guilty to a charge under Section 121, which allows for the death penalty, a notice would be served to him through the jail superintendent regarding both the application for condonation of delay and the appeal. 

The next hearing in the case has been scheduled for 9 August.

In May 2022, the trial court rejected the NIA’s request for capital punishment but found the chief of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) guilty of various offenses under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and IPC. 

The trial court sentenced him to life imprisonment, stating that Malik’s crimes aimed to forcefully secede Jammu and Kashmir from the Union of India and struck at the “heart of the idea of India.”  However, the court deemed the case not to be of the “rarest of rare” nature, which would warrant a death penalty.