NEW DELHI: Delhi HC on Friday ordered Tihar jail authorities to provide necessary medical treatment to separatist Yasin Malik, who is serving a life sentence in a terror case and is on a hunger strike. Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta also issued notices to Centre, Delhi govt and Tihar jail authorities on a plea seeking Malik’s medical care and sought a health status report. The matter will next be heard on Nov 11.
The directions came after Malik’s counsel said his client required urgent hospitalisation. “Keeping in perspective submissions made by counsel for the petitioner, the superintendent jail is directed to ensure that necessary medical treatment is provided to the petitioner in accordance with jail rules,” HC noted. Malik was awarded life-term by a Delhi trial court on May 24, 2022, after it found him guilty of offences under UAPA and IPC. NIA has filed an appeal in HC seeking enhancement of his life term to maximum punishment of death penalty.
In his petition before HC, Malik claimed to be a patient of “serious cardiac and kidney ailments,” currently facing a “life and death situation”. His plea stated there were “occasions when the petitioner was seriously ill or his presence was mandatorily required before the trial court, but in the garb of (Section) 268 of CrPC orders (restricting Malik to Tihar Jail and Delhi), he was neither taken to the hospital nor produced in courts”.
