In jail for 23 years, no SC relief for separatist leader Faktoo

R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, August 30

The Supreme Court today rejected the plea of separatist Kashmiri leader Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, alias Dr Muhammad Qasim Faktoo, for releasing him, ending his 23-year-long period in jail. Faktoo was convicted and sentenced for life under TADA for murdering trade union and human rights activist HN Wanchoo in Srinagar on December 5, 1992.

A three-member Bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi dismissed his criminal writ petition, observing that the convict had already exhausted all his judicial remedies following the rejection of his review petition in September 2003 and the curative petition in February 2005.

Faktoo had no right left for getting his case reopened afresh as there was no infraction of the principles of natural justice or any error in earlier judgments that “shakes the integrity of the justice delivery system,” the Bench held. Justices PC Pant and AM Khanwilkar were the other members of the Bench.

The apex court did not agree with the contentions of Faktoo’s senior counsel Ram Jethmalani that his client had been convicted on the basis of an “alleged confession” that had no legal basis as it was recorded during his police custody and that too by a junior officer, not by a Superintendent of Police as mandated in the now defunct Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA).

The Bench noted that the apex court had already considered and rejected all these contentions in its earlier judgments. A TADA court in Jammu had acquitted Faktoo in 2001, but the apex court reversed this finding and sentenced him to life sentence on January 30, 2003.

Husband of Dukhtaran-e-Millat chairperson Asiya Andrabi, Faktoo did PhD from the Department of Islamic Studies of the University of Kashmir while remaining in jail.

“Merely because in the comprehension of the writ petitioner the judgment of this court is erroneous would not enable the court to reopen the issue in departure to the established and settled norms and parameters of the extent of permissible exercise of jurisdiction as well as the procedural law governing such exercise. We, therefore, hold that the present writ petition is not maintainable and is accordingly dismissed,” the Bench explained.