After Yasin Malik was hospitalised on Wednesday, the sixth day of his hunger strike, separatist organisation Hurriyat and historian Rajmohan Gandhi expressed concern on the Kashmiri separatist leader’s health, reported The Hindu.

Malik, who is serving a life sentence in a terror funding case, began an indefinite hunger strike on July 22 after the Centre did not respond to his plea to be allowed to appear physically before a Jammu court.

The court is hearing the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed abduction case in which Malik has been named as an accused person.

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On July 15, Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, had identified Malik and three others as her abductors before a special Central Bureau of Investigation court.

On Wednesday, a Hurriyat spokesperson said it was concerned over media reports about the deteriorating health and safety of Malik.

The spokesperson said political prisoners of Jammu and Kashmir were being subjected to revenge for political reasons.

“All norms of judicial justice and redressal to them were being ignored,” he said. “Repression on the basis of political ideologies and claims of establishing peace through detentions, bans, censorship and sanctions can neither change the facts nor sentiments.”

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The separatist body demanded that all political prisoners, including Malik and Hurriyat founder Mohammad Umar Farooq, be released.

Meanwhile, Gandhi said that allowing Malik to die from a fast or sentencing him to death after “flawed trials” will only give Malik and Kashmiri separatism a long future life.

“Does the present government have no desire whatsoever to attract even minimal goodwill from the Kashmiri people?” he asked.

He added: “Questions are inescapable. Is it sound to reopen cases that were closed for 25 years or more by successive governments that negotiated with Malik, including governments led by the BJP’s [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee and by [Narendra] Modi in his first term?”