Malik, head of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), had pleaded guilty to the charges, but on Wednesday told the special court where his trial was held that he had been practicing nonviolent politics in Kashmir after give up weapons during the 1990s.
Mainly Hindu India has been fighting armed militancy in Muslim-majority Kashmir for decades, also claimed by neighboring Pakistan.
“It is time to recognize that terrorist financing is one of the most serious crimes and should be punished more severely,” Special Judge Parveen Singh told the New Delhi court, announcing Malik’s life imprisonment in a section of Illegal Activities. Prevention law.
The court is appointed for cases brought by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is primarily responsible for crimes that are considered to affect the sovereignty, security and integrity of India.
According to the Indian government, Malik had been “at the forefront of separatist activities and violence since 1988” in the Kashmir Valley. He says many Kashmiri Hindus had to flee because of the violence committed against them by Malik’s group in 1989.
Malik, who was convicted last week, had pleaded guilty to 10 charges against him by the NIA, such as waging or attempting to wage war on the government, and helping to raise funds for anyone “committing a terrorist act. “.
The court said Malik “did not want a trial and was therefore willing to plead guilty.”
His wife Mushaal Hussein Mullick said the sentence was illegitimate.
“Verdict in minutes by Indian kangaroo court,” he wrote on Twitter. “The iconic leader will never give up.”
In the main city of Kashmir, Srinagar, police fired tear gas and pellets to disperse protesters dragging stones out of Malik’s residence.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said it was a “black day” for Indian democracy and its justice system.
“India can physically imprison Yasin Malik, but it can never imprison the idea of freedom that it symbolizes,” Sharif said on Twitter.
India declared JKLF an “illegal association” in 2019, the year in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government split the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two federally controlled territories.
Kashmir political parties said Malik’s verdict was a setback to peace efforts.
“We hope that this will further aggravate the uncertainties in the region and only fuel more feelings of alienation and separatism,” a group of parties that have fought in the Kashmir elections in the past said in a statement.