Adding on to the list of sensational claims, Mohammad Yasin Malik, the jailed Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman, said that he was visited by Shankaracharyas at his home in Srinagar multiple times in the affidavit he filed before the Delhi High Court. In the document filed on April 25, the Kashmiri separatist leader chronicles how he moved from “state guest to dreaded terrorist in a matter of a week” and was sentenced to a life term by the National Investigation Agency.
Malik said that two of the Hindu monastic sect leaders visited him “not once but umpteen number of times and even held press conferences with him. He suggested that the visits showed a willingness by India’s religious leaders to engage with Kashmir separatists who shun them, the Kashmir Times reported.
“Isn’t it intriguing and a point to ponder over,” he asks, “that 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?”
Yasin Malik's charges and involvement in Kashmiri Pandit massacres
Malik was accused of killing four Indian Air Force officers in 1990 at Srinagar. He was also charged with kidnapping Rubiya Saeed, the daughter of former Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Exiled Kashmiri pandits have also blamed Malik for the community's ethnic cleansing and exodus from the state since the 1990s.
Malik said that he visited migrant camps of displaced Kashmiri Pandit families in 2002. (The Kashmir Times confirmed the visits were in 2007 according to newspaper reports.) He recalled meeting with the families in an “emotional and tearful visit” and said, “I met migrant families, listened to their grievances, and shared in their pain.”
As for the killings, Malik says that the four massacres that killed around 167 Kashmiri pandits all took place after 1996. He said that he mourned, criticised, and held strikes and actively participated in the cremation process of the unfortunate deceased. From 1994 onwards, Malik maintains, he renounced arms and embraced Gandhian non-violence.
He insisted that the allegations that he orchestrated the killings of the Pandits were baseless, frivolous, and disgusting, and were propagated through media, films, and the NIA chargesheet.
“A completely wrong narrative has been framed against me,” he said, “If I were truly guilty of genocide or gang rape, no sane government would have allowed me to speak on as critical an issue in independent India as Kashmir.”
In other claims Malik said that his meetings with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder and 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan in 2006 were part of a backchannel peace process that was initiated by Indian Intelligence officials and that he was praised for his work by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
In the affidavit Malik challenges his image as a militant terrorist and frames himself as someone who engaged with politicians and religious leaders for diplomacy and strategic ties. He was sentenced to life term by the NIA for receiving foreign funding and links with militant outfits. The NIA recently appealed to the Delhi High Court to convert the life term to a death sentence.