(This is a multi-part series that will appear in the next few days. This is Part-III of the series. Part-I, Part-II, Part-III and Part-IV can be read here.)
NEW DELHI: Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Mohammad Yasin Malik has doubled down on his claim that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has “deliberately distorted” his 2006 outreach to American officials and Pakistani stakeholders by portraying it as covert support for militancy.
In a detailed affidavit before the Delhi High Court, Malik says the email recovered from his computer and now embedded in the chargesheet was a transparent appeal to broaden talks on Kashmir, not an endorsement of Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin.
“The mail that NIA has lifted from my computer is part of a chain of conversations initiated after my meeting with the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,” Malik states. “Even a juvenile with the intellect of a fifth grader would comprehend that no support, overt or covert, clandestine or open, is provided to any terror outfit.”
Malik says he wrote to US officials after a one-on-one with Singh in February 2006, a meeting he says came after he handed the prime minister 1.5 million signatures gathered by JKLF during its “Safar-e-Azadi” campaign.
“The prime minister told me, ‘Be assured, Mr Malik, I want to resolve this issue.’ I replied that if the resolution is sincere, every stakeholder must be accommodated,” Malik recounts.
When Singh “reacted sharply” to the idea of speaking with militant leaders, Malik says he pressed the point. “Whether one likes it or not, militant leadership is a reality,” the affidavit reads. “If kept out of the process, they can sabotage it.”
Below is how Malik reconstructs the letter that the NIA has made central to its case and the US contacts he says surrounded it.
Malik describes the email as a brief, structured pitch to senior U.S. officials that revisited his exchange with the Indian prime minister and set out a case for widening the table:
Purpose line: that “conflict resolution” in Kashmir would fail if it remained a dialogue among governments and a small circle of politicians.
Core argument: that engaging militant leadership was not endorsement but insurance against spoilers. “Conflict management and conflict resolution are two different paths,” the mail says, according to Malik. “Exclusion keeps the conflict alive.”
The Salahuddin reference: Malik writes that he cited the United Jihad Council and “specifically Syed Salahuddin” as actors whose buy-in would be necessary if a ceasefire and political settlement were to hold. “This is not sympathy or support,” the mail states as quoted in the affidavit, “it is a practical step to prevent sabotage.”
Assurance of transparency: that he was acting “with knowledge of Indian authorities” and that he would brief New Delhi and key embassies on any follow-up.
Closing defence: a paragraph Malik says he added to pre-empt misreading. “No support, financial or material, is asked for or implied. The request is to nudge New Delhi and Islamabad toward an inclusive process that cannot be derailed by those kept outside.”
Malik notes that investigators have “isolated the one line that names Salahuddin” while ignoring the framing. “A single sentence is presented without the surrounding text where I explicitly reject violence and explain why inclusion is necessary,” he writes.
Washington Meetings
Malik’s affidavit lays out a short itinerary of 2006 meetings in the United States, which he says flowed directly from his exchanges with Singh:
Christina Rocca, then Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs.
“When I said militant leadership must be on board, she interrupted, ‘Yasin, what you are talking about is illegal in the USA,’” Malik writes. “I replied, I am not debating legality. If this is a resolution process, we should take every stakeholder on board because ignoring them licenses sabotage.”
Walter Anderson, then Director of Intelligence and Research at the State Department; Harry Thomas, then Executive Secretary of the State Department; and officers from the India and Pakistan desks.
Malik says he repeated to them that the aim was to prevent a narrow track from being wrecked by those excluded. “They listened and asked me to meet others to convince them,” he writes.
Elizabeth Millard, then Senior Director for South and Central Asia at the National Security Council and Special Assistant to President George W. Bush.
“I was invited to the White House. The response was positive,” Malik says. He does not claim any US commitment beyond receptiveness, but stresses that the access reflected an open diplomatic effort rather than a clandestine channel.
Malik adds that he briefed American and British diplomats in New Delhi upon return. “They asked me to inform them before any travel to Pakistan so they could inform their embassies in Islamabad,” he notes. “How can the same engagements later be portrayed as conspiratorial?”
‘Bureaucratic Sabotage’
The affidavit suggests that the push to enlarge talks stalled in New Delhi, not Washington. Malik blames “bureaucratic veto” and names the National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan for sabotaging talks.
Malik acknowledges that Kashmiri American Council Chairman Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai accompanied him to all meetings in Washington with US officials on Capitol Hill and at the State Department.
“Fai Sahib was with me in these meetings as a fellow Kashmiri living there,” Malik states, adding that he considered Fai a facilitator rather than a handler. “My purpose was peace and inclusion, not clandestine networks.”
Malik says that after returning from the US, he called the Indian official, whose number Prime Minister Singh had provided him as a contact person for follow-up.
Malik claims he urged Singh to send an envoy to the United States to meet Ghulam Nabi Fai. “This envoy was never sent, as Mr Narayanan, the then National Security Adviser, halted the whole process,” the affidavit says.
“Sanjay Baru, the prime minister’s media adviser, met me and said the prime minister liked my assertions but the bureaucracy did not and scuttled the process,” Malik writes. He says an “envoy” meant to follow through with him was “never sent,” and that Narayanan “halted the whole process.”
He said that soon, he arrived in Pakistan, the Kashmir American Council Chairman, Gualm Nabi Fai, also arrived from the US. “I met Pakistani Prime Minister Showkat Aziz and ISI Chief General Isfaq Parvez Kayani, who later became army chief. I urged them to support the idea of including the UJC leadership in the negotiating process.”
Malik says he confronted an American diplomat in New Delhi about the collapse. “Why did the US not ask India why it failed the process?” he recalls asking. “The reply came as a surprise. He said, ‘India is an elephant, and an elephant moves by itself and cannot be moved by anyone.’”
Plea to American Memory
As part of his narrative, Malik gives a personal prologue about how the US once looked to him like a guarantor of liberty, describing a visit to Liberty Island in New York Harbour.
“I was told this statue represented the ideals the US stood for,” he writes. “A beacon of hope for the downtrodden. But alas, nations including the U.S. have started pursuing policies based on selfish desires and not on principles.”
He weaves that sentiment into his defence of the 2006 letter. “The US decision to declare Syed Salahuddin a ‘global terrorist’ years later is a reminder that the world’s most powerful country suffers from short historical memory,” he says.
“My letter talked of engagement for a Kashmiri peace process, that too at the behest of the then Indian prime minister.”
Malik also invokes American think-tank engagement of the period. He notes that Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center met Salahuddin in person and then poses a rhetorical question.
“If an American think-tanker could meet him without being branded a terrorist, why is my asking for engagement criminalised?”
Hafiz Saeed Controversy
While the focus of the affidavit is the U.S. letter, Malik addresses the 2006 Pakistan visit that later fueled allegations against him. He says a senior Intelligence Bureau officer, identified as V. K. Joshi, “specifically requested” that he meet militant leaders to “assess the possibilities for strengthening the dialogue.”
“I met Hafiz Saeed, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief, and the United Jihad Council leadership,” Malik writes. “On the podium, I conveyed in unequivocal terms that as followers of Allah’s last Messenger, we should adhere to his sermons in their purest way. If somebody offers you peace, purchase peace with him.”
He says he debriefed Singh and Narayanan the same evening he returned to New Delhi. “They conveyed their gratitude for my efforts,” Malik writes. “But thirteen years later this meeting was distorted to brand me a terrorist.”
Malik then turns to what he calls selective outrage. “A leader in India with a Hindu name met Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan in full public view as a peace maker,” he claims, without naming the person. “What does it take to qualify as a terrorist? A surname?”
Malik’s narrative sets out a straight line: a prime ministerial nudge to explore wider talks; a trip to Washington that opened doors at the State Department and the White House; embassy briefings in New Delhi; a follow-on visit to Pakistan requested by Indian intelligence; and a final stall in Delhi’s bureaucracy. Years later, the same correspondence is cast as a smoking gun.
“What began as a peace mission is now weaponised against me,” he writes. “Despite working to strengthen the peace table, I am branded a terrorist.”
He frames this as a test of how India, America and Europe understand conflicts where insurgent groups still hold coercive power.
“In Northern Ireland and with the Nagas, India spoke without demanding surrender first,” he notes, recalling his one-on-one with Singh. “Why the double standards with Kashmiris?”
Closing Argument
Malik ends with a long view, alternating between resignation and resolve. “We are all tourists on this earth. We go for our miles, yearn for freedom, liberty and peace. But ideas remain,” he writes. “The most powerful idea is self-determination. Great powers rise and fall but ideas have a permanency that spans generations.”
He warns that Washington risks being recorded on the wrong side of that idea. “It will be too late for the U.S. to be on the right side of history if it chooses interests and power,” he says, invoking Thomas Jefferson: “The last hope of human liberty rests on us.”
While the NIA claims that such a letter proves alignment with terror, separatist leader who courted Washington openly, briefed embassies, took meetings at the State Department and the White House, now sits in prison arguing that the same paper trail is his best evidence that he lobbied for peace.
In his defence, he makes several interesting observations. These include:
“Even a juvenile with the intellect of a fifth grader would comprehend that no support, overt or covert, clandestine or open, is provided to any terror outfit.”
“Conflict management and conflict resolution are two different paths. Exclusion keeps the conflict alive.”
“If ignored and kept out, stakeholders are given a license to sabotage and turn the process into an assassination process.”
“It pained me that the USA and UK knew each and everything and yet chose silence when India sabotaged the process.”
“India is an elephant. An elephant moves by itself and cannot be moved by anyone.”
“History is not determined by interests and power but by ideals and ideas.”
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