This news article is a three-part series. Part-II is published today. Part-I can be read here.
SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik has once again disclosed details of years of contacts with India's intelligence establishment and senior political figures, claiming that successive governments that publicly regarded him as a militant leader simultaneously sought to engage him in dialogue process over Kashmir.
In an affidavit before a Srinagar court, Malik names present National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, former Intelligence Bureau director Shyamal Dutta and Track-II interlocutor R.K. Mishra among people involved in contacts with him.
He also describes attempts during Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar's tenure to arrange a meeting with him and gives details of the peace process under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Malik's account is particularly significant because he juxtaposes these contacts with his contention that allegations now levelled against him were apparently not raised during years of interaction with India's senior security establishment.
Malik says that after Chandra Shekhar became prime minister in December 1990, he was moved from Tihar Jail to a farmhouse at Mehrauli.
There, he says, he received several visits from senior security officials.
They included a senior Jammu and Kashmir police officer, BSF chief Ashok Patel and the IB officer he knew as "Dr Mathur".
"These officers repeatedly conveyed to me that arrangements were being explored for a meeting with the then Prime Minister, Shri Chandra Shekhar, over dinner," Malik says.
He says he declined.
"I respectfully conveyed that I did not consider it appropriate for a prisoner to dine with the Prime Minister."
It was while in Mehrauli, Malik says, that he first heard about Sarla Bhat's murder from the IB officer.
For Malik, the contact has another significance: he argues that senior intelligence officials were speaking to him at length, yet nobody raised the alleged handwritten note now cited in the Sarla Bhat prosecution.
Doval Contacts
Malik says a more organised political dialogue began following his release during Vajpayee's tenure.
"In the year 2000, I was released from jail during the tenure of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister of India," he states.
"Thereafter, the Government of India initiated a process of dialogue."
Malik says Ajit Doval, then a senior Intelligence Bureau officer, met him in New Delhi and arranged separate meetings with IB director Shyamal Dutta and National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra.
A parallel channel involved R.K. Mishra.
Malik says he visited Mishra's Vasant Vihar residence in Delhi on several occasions and that Mishra arranged a breakfast meeting with Brajesh Mishra.
R.K. Mishra, he says, was involved in Track-II diplomacy between India and Pakistan.
During Nawaz Sharif's tenure as Pakistan's prime minister, Malik says Mishra maintained contact with former Pakistani foreign secretary Niaz A. Naik.
During General Pervez Musharraf's presidency, according to the affidavit, the channel involved Pakistan's national security adviser Tariq Aziz.
Malik makes an unusual claim about corporate interest in the India-Pakistan peace process.
He says Reliance Industries had a commercial interest in stability because of its investment in the Jamnagar refinery in Gujarat, which Malik regarded as vulnerable to India-Pakistan military confrontation because of its geographical location.
"In my understanding, this commercial reality provided an additional incentive for promoting dialogue and peace," he says.
Malik says R.K. Mishra once asked him to speak by telephone with Reliance founder Dhirubhai Ambani.
During the conversation, Malik says, the two discussed their "respective humble beginnings".
According to Malik, Ambani spoke about perseverance, hard work and determination and about people from modest backgrounds succeeding through sustained effort.
Malik says Brajesh Mishra and Doval conveyed a particularly personal message from Vajpayee.
He writes that they told him that "Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee wants a healthy Yasin Malik at peace and dialogue table."
Malik says it was during Vajpayee's tenure that he was issued a passport for the first time.
The document, he says, allowed him to travel to the United States and Britain for medical treatment for facial paralysis and ear injuries and also in connection with the peace process.
Malik underwent examination at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States.
He says doctors there examined the facial paralysis and other injuries dating from his 1990 fall.
According to the affidavit, doctors proposed two surgical procedures that they believed could restore about 60 percent of his condition, while approximately 40 percent of the disability would remain permanent.
Then came another episode Malik discloses in the affidavit.
About two days before surgery, he says, the Indian Embassy contacted one of his friends and conveyed that Vajpayee had sanctioned $50,000 towards his medical treatment.
Malik says he refused the money.
"While expressing my sincere gratitude for the concern shown by the Prime Minister, I respectfully declined to accept the financial assistance and requested that my thanks be conveyed to him," he says.
The following day, Malik says, R.K. Mishra telephoned from Delhi and asked why he had refused the prime minister's assistance.
Malik again expressed gratitude but declined.
He says Pakistan also offered financial help.
Altaf Qadri, then JKLF chief spokesperson, travelled from Pakistan to attend to Malik in the United States and told him that Pakistan's then ambassador, Maleeha Lodhi, had provided $30,000 towards his treatment.
Malik says he refused that money as well.
His hospital and medical expenses, he says, were ultimately paid by the JKLF's England branch.
From Militant Movement to Peace Activist
The affidavit also gives Malik's own framing of the political trajectory of the Kashmir conflict.
He acknowledges the beginning of armed militancy around 1988 and discusses the events surrounding the Kashmiri Pandit migration of January 1990, while presenting a sharply contested interpretation of those events.
He argues elsewhere in the affidavit that his political constituency has always been tied to the idea of an independent Kashmir rather than electoral politics within India.
"I have had public interaction with people in both parts of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir on account of my political ideology relating to an independent Kashmir," he says.
"I have never enjoyed any electoral constituency or political support within India."
Malik says he was arrested in 2019 and initially detained at Kothibagh police station in Srinagar.
About seven days later, he says, he was detained under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act and transferred to Kot Bhalwal Central Jail in Jammu.
On April 8, 2019, he received summons to appear before an NIA special judge at Patiala House Courts in Delhi.
Malik recounts that he was flown from Jammu to Delhi on a regular passenger aircraft accompanied by only two Jammu and Kashmir police officials and one NIA representative.
He says a Tihar deputy superintendent joked about the contrast between the intense public portrayal of him as a security threat and the fact that only three officials had escorted him.
Malik contends that his name became a political symbol during the 2019 and 2024 general election campaigns.
During his 2019 court appearance, he says, he encountered a heavy security and media presence and his production before the court became a major television story just before polling.
He claims the publicity was incorporated into election campaigning.
Malik also recalls developments surrounding the framing of charges against him in 2022.
He says his case was repeatedly listed before the NIA special court during November and December 2021, with charges eventually framed in April 2022.
Malik says that a day before charges were framed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly encouraged people to watch The Kashmir Files.
Television channels, he says, repeatedly showed footage of Malik's earlier meeting with former prime minister Manmohan Singh.
According to Malik, the coverage portrayed him as responsible for the killing of Kashmiri Pandits and contrasted his earlier access to prime ministers with his imprisonment under the Modi government.
The next day, Malik says, Home Minister Amit Shah hosted the makers of The Kashmir Files. Charges against Malik followed shortly afterwards, according to the chronology he gives in his affidavit.
During the 2024 general election campaign, Malik says, billboards appeared in Delhi carrying photographs of himself and Manmohan Singh and the words "Release Yasin Malik."
He says he was surprised that the media did not investigate who had paid for the advertisements.
Outreach to Kashmiri Pandits
Malik also uses the affidavit to challenge allegations that he bears responsibility for the broader killings and displacement of Kashmiri Pandits.
He cites the Wandhama massacre, saying he and his colleagues went to the scene, helped arrange cremations and called for a shutdown the following day to condemn the killings.
He recounts a 1997 television programme hosted by Shatrughan Sinha in which he debated the Pandit migration before an audience largely comprising members of the community.
According to Malik, audience members strongly criticised him during recording but interacted warmly with him afterwards.
He also says that in 2012, Surinder Ambardar conveyed that then BJP president Rajnath Singh wanted to meet him during a Kashmir visit.
Malik says he offered to host Singh for lunch or dinner at his residence, but the meeting did not ultimately take place.
He contrasts that episode with Ambardar's subsequent television appearances demanding severe punishment for him.
These passages form part of Malik's attempt to present a political record in which, he argues, successive Indian governments and political figures engaged him as an interlocutor even while cases connected with Kashmir's armed insurgency remained unresolved.
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