Yasin Malik Denies Involvement in Kashmir Pandit Murder Case, Says He Will Divorce Pak Wife; requests the death penalty | Today’s news
Jailed Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Mohammad Yasin Malik, accused of murdering a Kashmiri Pandit woman in 1990, has submitted a 25-page affidavit to a special court, declaring his innocence but refusing to contest the case and seeking the death penalty, news agency PTI reported.
Malik, who is lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, claimed that the allegations appear to be a fabricated story rather than a legitimate police investigation, arguing that the case was built decades later purely to frame him.
In an affidavit, the 60-year-old JKLF chief also announced his decision to dissolve his marriage to his wife Mushaal Hussein Mullick, citing his prolonged imprisonment and inability to communicate with his family during the past eight years as he had no access to phone calls or video conferencing, the news agency said.
Read also | Yasin Malik accused of killing Sarla Bhat in 1990: What happened?
“Before I am hanged, I have decided to separate you from the bond of our Nikah,” Malik wrote to his wife in the same affidavit, advising his daughter to call her grandparents for five minutes every day.
In an affidavit verified and authenticated at Central Jail No. 7, Tihar, Malik declared his decision to stop challenging the ongoing court proceedings and said he had placed his case in the hands of God.
“With regard to my personal circumstances and after deep consideration, I have decided not to challenge the court proceedings any further. My decision will not be considered as an admission of any fact, guilt or acceptance of the charges brought against me. I am asking for the death penalty,” Malík said in his submission to the court.
The JKLF chief claimed that he was falsely implicated for political reasons.
19 April 1990 murder of Sarla Bhat
Malik’s affidavit comes after the State Investigation Agency (SIA) Jammu and Kashmir filed a chargesheet on June 29 in connection with the April 19, 1990 murder of Sarla Bhat, a young Kashmiri pandit. He was named as an accused in the case.
He vehemently denied the SIA’s allegations, calling them an “afterthought” made after more than three decades, and claimed that during April 1990, he was critically injured after falling from a building during a BSF raid in Narwara, remained in a coma and was twice reported dead by the news, including the state-run Doordarshan.
“It is incomprehensible how a person who was unconscious, fighting for her own survival and widely believed to be dead, could have participated in the commission of a crime, directed or organized the commission of a crime,” Malik said, adding that Bhat was an innocent civilian and denied that she acted as a security informant.
He said Bhat did not work for the security forces in any secret capacity, nor was she in any way responsible for the raid on Narwar, where he was holed up.
Read also | Yasin Malik says Delhi HC IB arranged his meeting with Hafiz Saeed in 2006
Before filing the charge sheet, Malik said that three SIA officers visited him in Tihar jail and interrogated him only on two charges – a handwritten note issued by the JKLF recovered from the scene of the incident claiming responsibility and naming three names Javaid Mir, Sheikh Abdul Hamid and Mohammad Yasin Malik, and the other that he had passed on information suspecting the JKLF of killing its people as ordered by Bhat. Malik’s presence in the house of one Hafiz Bazaz.
“If this handwritten note, which is now accepted by the SIA as gospel truth, was found at the scene of the alleged killing, why did the authorities not implicate the three persons mentioned in the letter for three decades,” he said in the affidavit.
He also mentioned the then Governor Jagmohan and said that a large section of the Kashmiri Pandit community considered him their protector, but never suggested that Malik was responsible for killing Bhat.
Malik further said that when he was arrested in August 1990, nearly two dozen cases under TADA were registered against him, but he was never named as an accused in Bhat’s murder.
“If such an incriminating letter actually existed, there would be absolutely no reason for the investigating authorities to rule this case out,” the affidavit said.
Malik claimed that the indictment by the investigating agency naming him as an accused in the murder case was nothing but an afterthought.
“The prosecution’s current narrative resembles a fictitious story rather than an actual criminal investigation, carefully woven together over several decades for the sole purpose of falsely implicating me in this case,” the affidavit read.
He described the prosecution’s case as “unbelievable, completely false and unsupported by evidence” and said the new case was due to current political circumstances and decisions.
Malik also dropped many names during his earlier stint in jails, which included his meetings with then-senior intelligence officials, BJP and Congress leaders, top businessmen and those engaged in “Tier 2 diplomacy” with Pakistan.
In his affidavit filed in a court in Srinagar, Malik said he performed “Istikhara”, a special prayer and supplication used to ask for God’s guidance and the best choice when faced with a decision, before deciding to separate from his wife.
Malik noted that his wife is 20 years his junior and expressed that he did not want her to spend the rest of her life bearing the burden of his circumstances or living as a widow. He cited former South African President Nelson Mandela’s writings about the personal sacrifices of political life and urged her to start a new chapter with dignity.
Read also | ‘I’m a Gandhian now’: Yasin Malik before UAPA tribunal over JKLF-Y ban
Malik also wrote a message to his 13-year-old daughter Raziya Sultana, whom he had not heard from for the past eight years. “On my death row, it’s just me and your photo. Through your picture, I feel your presence with me twenty-five hours a day,” the affidavit reads.
Malik ended his post with a verse by poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and passages from the Koran, describing the document as his “ultimate statement of conscience”.
\”In my death cell, it’s just me and your photo. Through your picture, I feel your presence with me twenty-five hours a day.”
“I bear no hatred towards any individual. I seek no revenge against anyone. I leave every act, every accusation, every decision and every injustice to the final judgment of Almighty Allah,” he said.
