Worked with successive PMs, intel chiefs, business tycoons to foster peace in J-K: Yasin Malik

New Delhi, Sep 19 (PTI) Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik has claimed that he spent nearly three decades as a key figure in a state-sanctioned “backchannel” mechanism, working with a succession of prime ministers, intelligence chiefs, and even business tycoons to foster peace in Jammu and Kashmir.

In an 85-page affidavit submitted before the Delhi High Court, Malik, chief of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), has shared details about his journey – from his school days to links with terrorists and meetings with political leaders.

The affidavit was submitted after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) challenged Malik’s life sentence and pleaded to enhance the punishment to death penalty in a case of receiving foreign funding and maintaining links with terror groups.

In the affidavit, Malik, who is in Tihar Jail since 2019, claimed that the state is attempting to "erase" the history of engagement.

He said "being a scapegoat in politics isn't a new thing, it’s a kind of a new normal but being a sacrificial goat is something which goes beyond the shard of high handedness of morality, if at all politics had one”.

Malik claimed that since his release in 1994 and announcing a unilateral ceasefire on the promise that bail would be provided in all 32 cases pending against him and that none of the cases would be pursued, every prime minister, including the present, during their first term had honoured it.

He also spoke about the famous Ramzan ceasefire announced by then-prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpyee in 2000-01, a move that came under severe criticism.

“After seven days, a journalist called us over to his home where Congress leader Dr Manmohan Singh and Najma Heptulla were also present. We discussed Vajpayee's ceasefire initiative for three hours. At the end of the meeting, Dr Manmohan Singh asked me, ‘what do you expect from us’? “We replied that as opposition, we would like your support for Vajpayee's ceasefire, and just after 24 hours, a Congress delegation met Vajpayee and extended support to the ceasefire,” Malik claimed in his affidavit.

He said thereafter they met two ex-prime ministers – V P Singh and I K Gujral – besides the CPI and CPM to bring all the opposition parties on board for the peace initiative launched by the Vajpayee government.

Malik also said it was during the BJP government’s rule that he received his first passport on which he travelled to the US and the UK.

He then spoke about his meetings with former prime minister Manmohan Singh, who wanted to further strengthen Vajpayee's peace process but had to face a backlash from the BJP.

This prompted, Malik said, writing a letter to Vajpayee, who was then the leader of opposition in which it was clearly mentioned that "you (Vajpayee) are directly responsible for the current peace process and the credit goes to you for all the present opportunities that are yet waiting to be seized by the government in India and Pakistan..." Malik also alleged that his meeting with dreaded terrorist and founder of Lashker-e-Taiba Hafiz Saeed came at the instance of the then-Central government, which was keen on strengthening the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir.

"I had informed the trial court judge that if my intentions were nefarious and evil in design, I would never have legally travelled to Pakistan and met the militant leaders of Pakistan on the stage in the presence of international press," Malik claimed.

He also denied his role in terror funding and claimed that the NIA could not produce a shred of evidence in this regard.

Malik claimed he was not a lone actor but was encouraged and deployed by the state itself to keep the "peace track" alive in Kashmir, and recounted a series of high-level meetings and communications, including phone calls with industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani, secret meetings with Intelligence Bureau (IB) directors and dinners with home minister and other top officials.

According to Malik, this relationship began in the early 1990s when he was taken from jail to a Delhi bungalow to meet then-home minister Rajesh Pilot and IB officials, claiming they urged him to give up arms under the direct instructions of then-prime minister P V Narasimha Rao.

Following this meeting, Malik said he was released in 1994, after which he announced a unilateral ceasefire and vowed to pursue a "peaceful, democratic struggle”.

Malik claimed that for 25 years, a truce was honoured by multiple prime ministers, including Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee, Gujral, Manmohan Singh, and even the first term of Narendra Modi.

However, he claimed this long-standing arrangement was shattered with the 2019 abrogation of Article 370. “Fear, intimidation, and arrests of thousands of political leaders, activists, teachers, lawyers and journalists followed. Old cases were reopened, charges were framed after 31 years,” his affidavit said.

Despite the high stakes, Malik expressed a fatalistic acceptance of his fate. “I understand the balance of scales isn't tipped in my favour… Being a diehard romantic, I would accept it as the ultimate endgame of my fate, gleefully,” he said.

“If the state chooses to disengage and disassociate from me as it once engaged, I will accept it, with a smile,” he added. PTI SKV SKL ARI