After nearly 31 years, a court in Srinagar on Wednesday restarted the trial of former militant Farooq Ahmed Dar notoriously known as Bitta Karate.
The trial is reopened after the family of slain Kashmiri pandit Satish Tickoo, one of his victims, filed a criminal application.
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Bitta Karate was arrested along with his associates by Indian forces in June 1990 from Srinagar and detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and had over 19 militancy-related cases against him.
He remained under arrest for 16 years and was eventually released on bail in 2006.
A Kashmiri Pandit organization had also moved a curative petition in the Supreme Court seeking a probe either by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the mass murders of Kashmiri Pandits during 1989-90.
The plea sought prosecution of Yasin Malik and Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate, Javed Ahmed Dar and others, for hundreds of FIRs of murders of Kashmiri Pandits during 1989-90, 1997 and 1998, and which are lying uninvestigated by J&K Police even after nearly three decades.
Bitta Karate admitted to killing “more than 20” Kashmiri Pandits or “maybe more than 30-40” in 1990.
Bitta Karate had admitted on camera that his first victim was Kashmiri Hindu Satish Tickoo. The Srinagar sessions court on Wednesday asked Satish Tickoo’s family lawyer to file a hard copy of their plea by April 16. The next hearing in the case will be held on April 16.
The filing of the criminal application against Karate comes amid growing demand for reopening cases related to the killing of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s.
Farooq Ahmed Dar is currently lodged in the Tihar Jail. In July 2017, he was arrested along with six others on accusation of receiving funds from Pakistan.