Srinagar, July 23 (KNS): People’s Conference president Sajad Gani Lone on Saturday said that the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Yasin Malik should get a fair trial.

"Our party has no sympathy with his thinking but he deserves a trial where he is able to present his side,” Lone said while talking to reporters

"We may have ideological differences, but Yasin Malik deserves a fair trial. Whatever is happening or whatever happened in Kashmir is because of 1987 election rigging. I don’t understand why govt is covering up things that happened in 1987. There should be a probe," he said.

Notably, Malik is on a hunger strike in Tihar Jail after the government did not respond to his plea that he be allowed to physically appear in a Jammu court hearing the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case in which he is an accused.

Quoting Malik's will, he said that they had fully supported in the 1987 elections but on the day the result was to be declared, their suspicion turned out to be true because those who won the election were told that you lost and those who lost were told that you won following which Malik was arrested from the vote counting station and was taken to the RED-16 interrogation centre.

Yasin Malik further writes that he fell ill at the Red-16 centre and was brought to the Police Hospital while the rest of his party associates were booked under the Public Safety Act.

Questioning the central government, he said that if they say that they want to bring change on ground then why the old minor cases are being investigated by NIA now. 

He also criticised PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti after she had said that her sister has done her duty as per the law in identifying Malik as one of her kidnappers in 1989.(KNS).