Yasin Malik's wife to be part of Pakistan PM's caretaker cabinet

Jailed separatist leader Yasin Malik's wife Mushaal Hussein Mullick will be part of Pakistan Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar's caretaker cabinet, India Today reported on Thursday. Mushaal Hussein Mullick will be Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Human Rights in the caretaker Cabinet of Pakistan.

Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister has appointed a new cabinet ahead of the national elections due in early November, Geo News reported on Thursday. Former US ambassador Jalil Abbas Jilani has been named foreign minister and former central bank chief Shamshad Akhtar has been appointed finance minister as part of the new caretaker cabinet, the report said.

Yasin Malik married Mushaal Hussein, an alumnus of the London School of Economics, in 2009 and the couple has a 10-year-old daughter, Razia Sultana, who lives with her mother in Pakistan. 

Malik was arrested in early 2019 in connection with a 2017 terror-funding case registered by National Investigation Agency (NIA). In May last year, he was convicted by a Delhi court in a terror funding case and was awarded a life sentence.

Malik had pleaded guilty to all the charges, including those under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). He was accused of terrorism and secessionist activities that disturbed the Kashmir valley in 2017. 

Malik had told the court that he was not contesting the charges levelled against him including section 16 (terrorist act), 17 (raising funds for the terrorist act), 18 (conspiracy to commit terrorist act), and 20 (being member of terrorist gang or organisation) of the UAPA.

Born in April 1966 in Maisuma locality in Srinagar, Malik is also facing trial in the abduction case of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of the then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in 1989, and an attack by JKLF militants on IAF personnel in Srinagar that left four dead and many others injured in 1990.

(With inputs from Geeta Mohan)