NEW DELHI : The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea of Kashmir’s longest serving prisoner to reconsider his conviction to life term since he is already in prison for over two decades. Dr Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a top-ranking former commander of the Islamist outfit Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JM) has been serving a life term for the murder of human rights activist Hridhay Nath Wanchoo in 1992.
A Jammu court had acquitted him in 2001, but the Supreme Court overturned the verdict and held him guilty. Faktoo had moved the Apex Court in 2008 for review of his conviction. The Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, Prafulla C Pant and A M Khanvilkar, however, dismissed his writ petition, saying the life imprisonment is for life and not for a fixed number of years.
Faktoo was convicted by the Supreme Court under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and for murder and conspiracy on January 30, 2003. His review petition was dismissed same year in September while the co-accused Mohd Shafi Khan’s curative petition was also dismissed in February 2005.
In his petition basically against the 2003 conviction, Faktoo sought orders to the Centre to produce him before the court and thereafter release him from what he described as ‘illegal custody.’ The writ petition was converted into a review petition. Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani contended before the Court that Faktoo was convicted on the basis of his alleged confession in which nowhere he implicates himself with the alleged offences.
The Court, however, rejected the petition as not maintainable; stressing that merely because in the petitioner’s comprehension the judgment is erroneous would not enable the court to reopen the issue in departure of the established and settled norms.
