Yasin Malik (File pic)
JAMMU: A second “key eyewitness” has identified in court jailed Kashmiri separatist Yasin Malik as the “main shooter” in the 1990 terrorist attack in which four unarmed IAF personnel waiting for a staff bus in Srinagar were killed and 22 others wounded, officials revealed on Sunday.The unnamed witness’s testimony in a TADA court in Jammu last Friday comes 22 months after a retired IAF colleague of the victims first identified Malik, chief of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), as the main armed assailant.He was present in court when the second witness backed his testimony at the trial.Besides Malik, serving a life sentence in Tihar since May 2022 in a terror funding case, both witnesses identified his three alleged accomplices in front of the TADA judge as the perpetrators of the Jan 25, 1990, attack at Rawalpora on the outskirts of the J&K capital.Officials quoted the second eyewitness as testifying that one of the other arrested men, Nana Ji, trained an AK-47 rifle on him and was about to fire before turning away.Both Malik and Nana Ji attended the proceedings through video-conferencing, as ordered by Supreme Court, while the other two accused – Shaukat Bakshi and Javed Mir – were present in the courtroom, special public prosecutor Monika Kohli said.On April 4, SC denied Malik’s request to be taken to the Jammu court, citing safety reasons. The court allowed him to cross-examine witnesses via video-conferencing.The next hearing of the case is scheduled for November 29.
