Payback time for Yasin Malik’s past sins in Kashmir
By issuing summons to Rubaiya Sayeed to depose as a witness in her sensational abduction in December 1989 by JKLF leader Yasin Malik and others, a TADA court hopes to unpeel more layers of one of the most shameful episodes in the state’s jihadi terror history. Her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was Union home minister in the V P Singh-led government at that point in time. Rubaiya’s kidnapping was a watershed moment in Kashmir’s chequered history as it shook the national will to fight terror to its core.
For, the Centre went down on bended knees and released five hardcore terrorists to secure her freedom. Ever since, the Kashmir situation worsened. The mass murder and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits happened the following year. By and by, Malik became a tall leader. In 1994, he split the JKLF to lead its Kashmir rump. The same year, he claimed he had turned a Gandhian and later went on to rub shoulders with diplomats and PMs but never yielded on his demand for a separate homeland.
In a subsequent trial for terror funding, Malik sought to do grandstanding by confessing to all the charges brought against him, perhaps assuming that his Mahatma spin would give him a free pass out of jail. However, a special NIA court did not see any reform in him, pointing out that unlike a Gandhian, he had not condemned violence but instead perpetuated it through terror funding with foreign support. Last week, the court awarded him double life sentences. Shortly thereafter, there was sporadic violence in a few pockets of Kashmir but it died down soon. Another important hearing coming up against Malik in a TADA court is on a plot to murder four Air Force officials in 1990. Would he confess to all those charges as well?
Back to the politics of kidnapping, in stark contrast to her expressive sister Mehbooba Mufti who went on to milk her dad’s legacy, Rubaiya chose complete silence as she quickly married, relocated to Tamil Nadu and went incommunicado. If she does pick up courage to turn up in court now, her perspective would be valuable to corroborate prima facie evidence the judge found against the accused in her abduction over 32 years ago.