NEW DELHI: The jailed Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik, widely regarded as a pioneer of armed militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, has made a series of shocking claims in an affidavit submitted to the Delhi High Court.
These include announcing a ceasefire after a deal with the Centre, meetings with several Prime Ministers, business tycoons, RSS leaders, two Shankaracharyas and others.
Malik also claimed that his visit to Pakistan and meeting with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed was orchestrated by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and that then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh thanked him for engaging with Hafiz Saeed.
In the affidavit filed before the Delhi High Court, Malik, who was awarded a life sentence by an NIA court in 2022, claimed to have held sustained dialogue with the RSS leadership.
“In 2001, the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation facilitated a marathon meeting between me and RSS leaders at New Delhi’s India International Centre. The session lasted for five hours,” Malik alleged in the affidavit.
“Instead of keeping an arm’s length distance from me — or rather not touching someone like me with a ten-foot pole — the RSS leadership chose to engage directly,” Malik said, claiming he received repeated invitations to the residence of Admiral K. N. Suri, chairperson of the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think tank often linked with the RSS.
“Admiral Suri frequently invited me to his residence in New Delhi for luncheons and also to the India International Centre,” the affidavit alleged.
According to Malik, a Kashmiri Pandit leader, Surender Amardhar, linked to the RSS, visited his residence in Srinagar with the same purpose of dialogue and outreach.
Malik, who shunned militancy after his release from detention in 1994 and chose a Gandhian, non-violent political path, disclosed in the affidavit that two Shankaracharyas visited his Srinagar residence several times and even held press conferences with him.
“Isn’t it intriguing and a point to ponder over? Instead of keeping someone like me at bay, such representatives of the majority community decided to associate their godly name with someone facing such grave and heinous allegations? The visits symbolise a willingness in sections of India’s religious leadership to engage with Kashmiri separatists rather than shun them,” the affidavit claimed.
Malik accused the present NDA government of breaching faith by reviving 35-year-old cases, despite the spirit of a ceasefire. “In complete breach of faith, suddenly the present dispensation has started trial of two CBI-TADA related militant cases. This is completely against the spirit and genesis of the ceasefire agreement,” he stated.
In the affidavit, Malik also disclosed his decades-long involvement in India’s backchannel diplomacy, from intimate dinners with ministers and intelligence chiefs to a phone call with industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani.
Giving a sequence of details leading to his release from detention, Malik said in the affidavit that after three years of negotiations, he was released in May 1994.
In the affidavit, he claimed then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao had given specific orders to bring him back into democratic politics.
After his release, he said he renounced violence, announced a unilateral ceasefire and declared he would pursue “a non-violent democratic peaceful struggle”.
“The government followed through. Bail was granted in all 32 pending TADA cases, and none were pursued,” he claimed. Malik insisted the truce was honoured for 25 years — across the tenures of Rao, Vajpayee, Gujral, Manmohan Singh and even Modi’s first term.
Malik recalled that in one meeting, R. K. Mishra, a trusted aide of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, handed him a phone and on the other end was Dhirubhai Ambani.
The JKLF chief claimed that Ambani spoke warmly about his “humble and nimble beginnings” and stressed that “sheer hard work often results in rewarding results.”
The call, according to Malik, suggested the unusual breadth of his contacts — from ministers to tycoons.
According to the affidavit, during the 2000 Ramzan ceasefire, Malik met IB Director Shyamal Dutta and NSA Brajesh Mishra, who assured him that Prime Minister Vajpayee was “serious in the talks process”.
“Journalist Prem Shankar Jha hosted a three-hour meeting at his Golf Links residence. It was attended by Dr Manmohan Singh, Najma Heptullah and other Congress leaders. Singh asked me, ‘What do you expect from us?’ I told him as opposition, support Prime Minister Vajpayee’s peace process fully,” Malik claimed.
The very next day, he said, Singh led a Congress delegation to Vajpayee and publicly endorsed the ceasefire. “Vajpayee sent thanks through R. K. Mishra,” he alleged.
Malik claimed he later met Sonia Gandhi at 10 Janpath, and ex-prime ministers V. P. Singh and I. K. Gujral. “Communist leaders A. B. Bardhan and Prakash Karat also lent support. We brought the whole opposition on board,” he stated.
On his 2006 meeting with LeT chief Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan, Malik claimed it was initiated by IB Special Director V. K. Joshi.
“Joshi met me in New Delhi and said it would be very helpful if I could engage Saeed and other Pakistani leaders to strengthen Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s peace process. I travelled to Pakistan, and in a public function with Saeed and United Jihad Council, urged militants to embrace peace,” the JKLF chief alleged in the affidavit.
He recalled that on his return, Special Director IB V. K. Joshi, as part of the debriefing exercise, “met me in the hotel and requested me to immediately brief the PM. I met the PM Manmohan Singh, the same evening and M. K. Narayanan, National Security Adviser, was also present. I briefed him on my meetings and appraised him of the possibilities and he conveyed his gratitude to me for my efforts, time, patience, and dedication”.
“Yet years later, the same meeting was portrayed out of context to brand me a terrorist,” he alleged.
According to Malik, for 25 years, the understanding with the Centre was honoured. “But after August 2019, everything shifted. Old cases were reopened, charges framed after 31 years,” he claimed.
Malik was arrested in 2019 and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022 by an NIA court on charges of terror funding and alleged links with terror outfits.
“The Indian state gave me a promise that neither I nor my party colleagues’ TADA cases will be followed. This promise was followed by five prime ministers, including the present prime minister in his first tenure. But after Article 370 abrogation, everything changed,” he alleged.
As the NIA has moved the Delhi High Court to increase the quantum of his punishment from life imprisonment to the death sentence, Malik said he is ready to be hanged. “If the state chooses to disengage and disassociate from me as it once engaged, I will accept it — with a smile,” he stated.
Ahead of the Article 370 abrogation, and the downgrading and bifurcation of the erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir state into two Union Territories by the Centre on August 5, 2019, the Centre had launched a massive crackdown against the separatists. It had banned Yasin Malik’s JKLF and Jamaat-e-Islami and arrested almost all of the top separatist leaders, including Malik, and lodged them outside Jammu & Kashmir.
After the Article 370 abrogation, separatist politics has taken a back seat in the Valley and even Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq hardly speaks about politics now.
