Yasin Malik, once one of Kashmir’s most recognisable separatist faces, is back in the headlines. This time not for street protests or peace overtures, but for an explosive affidavit which he has filed in a Delhi court.
In it, he claims that successive governments saw him as a bridge between India and Pakistan, including with state-backed terrorist outfits there.
Malik is now serving a life sentence in a terror funding case. Inter alia, the accusations against him include being party to the killing of Kashmiri Pandits circa 1990, when he was still a militant. He denies this and claims it as a campaign against him.
Born in 1966 in Srinagar’s volatile Maisuma locality, once dubbed the ‘Gaza of Kashmir’, Malik’s journey as a Kalashnikov-wielding militant who later self-proclaimed himself as follower of Mahatma Gandhi has been anything but linear. His radical turn came in 1987, after allegations of electoral rigging in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections.
Malik had campaigned for Muhammad Yusuf Shah, a candidate of the separatist-leaning Muslim United Front. That election, widely seen as manipulated, radicalised many young Kashmiris. Shah would later become Syed Salahuddin, now the Pakistan-based head of the banned Hizbul Mujahideen. Malik, meanwhile, crossed the Line of Control to get arms training.
By late 1980s, Malik returned and emerged as the face of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), the first outfit to openly declare an armed struggle for Kashmir’s “independence.” His rise to prominence coincided with a turning point in insurgency—the 1989 kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
Though Malik denies direct involvement, the episode boosted Malik’s profile. So visible, in fact, that a life-sized cut-out of Malik was once erected near a key junction connecting Lahore with the Lashkar-e-Taiba headquarters in Muridke and the Kartarpur shrine in Narowal, Pakistan. The symbolism was unmistakable.
But in 1994, Malik took a surprising turn. Declaring that JKLF would renounce violence, he styled himself as a non-violent Gandhian. That change, along with his relevance in separatist circles and contacts across the border, made him a frequent subject of Indian backchannel diplomacy.
Prime Ministers—from Chandra Shekhar and PV Narasimha Rao to Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh—engaged with him, either directly or through interlocutors. Even in PM Narendra Modi’s first term, officials are believed to have quietly maintained channels with him. Yet the bridge was never fully built.
Now, from prison, Malik has reignited debate over the past.
In a recent 85-page affidavit submitted to the Delhi HC, where the NIA is pressing for a death sentence, Malik claims he was deeply embedded in India’s unofficial peace outreach.
Among his most sensational disclosures are a five-hour meeting with RSS leaders in 2001 at the India International Centre, facilitated by the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation. He also claims Shankaracharyas visited him “umpteen times” in Srinagar, even holding joint press meets.
Equally striking is Malik’s account of a 2006 meeting with LeT founder Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan, allegedly conducted not at his behest, but under instruction from Indian intelligence as part of a backchannel effort following the 2005 earthquake. He claimed that then-PM Manmohan Singh had thanked him for it.
Between 1995 and 2014, Malik was a regular fixture in Delhi, often spotted at elite gatherings, rubbing shoulders with policymakers and civil society members. But the political winds shifted.
The BJP’s outright majority in 2014 and its even stronger mandate in 2019 marked a decisive break. Modi’s second term saw the abrogation of Article 370 and the state’s reorganisation into a UT. With that came a tougher stance and the space for separatist politics shrank.
Malik remains, as ever, a deeply polarising figure seen by some as a fallen icon of Kashmiri resistance, by others as a man who played both sides. Whether his claims from jail reshape public memory or are dismissed as self-serving is still to be seen.
