Who is Yasin Malik?

Yasin Malik, the Kashmiri separatist leader and chief of banned JKLF, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in terror funding case, was in the first group of Kashmiri youth who crossed over to Pakistan in late 1980’s for armed training.

After his return from Pakistan, he along with Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Wani and Javed Mir, formed a core group - dubbed the “HAJY” group - of the JKLF militants with arms and training received in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir.

He was allegedly involved in the kidnapping of then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s daughter Rubaya Sayeed in December 1989 and killing of four Air Force officers in Srinagar in January 1990. The trial of both the cases is going on. There are reportedly 65 criminal cases against Malik.

However, in August 1990 Malik was arrested by security forces in old city Srinagar and he remained in jail till May 1994. Immediately after his release, Malik announced a unilateral ceasefire and adopted a "Gandhian non-violent struggle for independence".

In 2003, JKLF led by 56-year-old Malik launched its signature campaign for inclusion of Kashmiris in future talks on Kashmir. In May 2007, a campaign was launched by Malik which was known as Safar-i-Azadi (Journey of Freedom).

He was involved in back-channel talks with the government of India for several years till 2009. He even met then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at his official 7 Race Course Road residence in Delhi in 2006 and appeared in popular television shows like Rajat Sharma's Aap ki Adaalat.

In 2009, Malik married Pakistani artist Mushaal Hussein Mullick and the couple became parents to a girl named Raziya Sultana in March 2012. In February 2013, Malik sat with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed at a protest site in Islamabad, Pakistan against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

In 2017, the NIA registered a case of terror funding against various separatist leaders, and named Malik and four others in a chargesheet filed in 2019. On April 26, the NIA arrested him in connection with a case related to the funding of terror and separatist groups in J&K.