On Tuesday, May 10, the leader of Islamic jihad group Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Yasin Malik, pleaded guilty to all charges leveled against him before a Delhi Court. Arrested in 2019 during the crackdown against anti-India elements in the Valley after the Pulwama attack, Malik was being tried for raising funds for the terrorist act, conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, being a member of a terrorist gang and organization, criminal conspiracy, and sedition.
Malik has been involved in terror activities against India since the 1980s, and was one of the chief Islamic separatists responsible for the Kashmiri Hindu genocide of the 1990s. He was allegedly involved in the kidnapping of Rubaiya Saeed, the daughter of former Chief Minister and later Home Minister Mufti Sayeed. A hardcore jihadi driven by his commitment to Islam, Malik had admitted to killing four Air Force officers in 1990 during his interview with the BBC. Forty other personnel, including a lady officer, were wounded in that shootout, which he led.
If anything surpasses the ruthlessness of Malik, it is the Leftist intelligentsia’s relentless endeavors to legitimize him, whitewash his crimes, and create a messiah-like image of him. The secular-liberal cabal, including media and politicians, had almost erased from public view the heinous acts of violence that Yasin Malik executed, and elevated him to the status of an iconic peace-loving freedom fighter.
One of the most dismaying and betraying images for the Indian population is that of the former Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh happily exchanging smiles with Malik. The terrorist was cordially invited to the Prime Minister’s residence to discuss his outreach program in J&K. It was a haunting but not unexpected experience for the Indian democracy, which is familiar with politicians resorting to such antics. In 2019 again, several politicians from J&K leaped to defend Malik after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took him away. Farooq Abdullah, the two-time Chief Minister of the state and president of the National Conference, had demanded his immediate release.
One of the most outrageous examples of the adulation that was accorded to this Islamic terrorist is the Wikipedia page dedicated to him. The page claims that Malik “renounced violence in 1994 and adopted peaceful methods to come to a settlement on the Kashmir conflict,” and applauds his secessionist bloodshed as a “Gandhian non-violent struggle for independence.”
The Islam-pandering media of India went to the extreme of admiring the jihad leader responsible for the genocide of several thousand Kashmiri Hindus as a national hero. In 2008, the media house India Today group endorsed the terrorist as a “Youth Icon” at its annual conclave. They presented him with a platform to deliver a twelve-minute speech on live television, as the nation watched him further his anti-India ambitions. The esteemed conclave was attended by some of the noted personalities of the Indian film industry as well. What’s more shocking is that the terror mastermind behind the killing of Kashmiri Pandit Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo was called up on stage by the renowned industrialist Anand Mahindra. Mahindra introduced Malik as a “strong advocate for the right of return of Hindu Kashmiri Pandits who have been forced to leave the state.”
In another ludicrous episode, far-left journalist Ravish Kumar addressed Malik as “Yasin Sahab.” Now, “Sahab” is a term denoting great reverence, and in Indian culture, it is suffixed to the names of people one fondly admires. For leftist journalists, their object of admiration is the killer of several thousand Hindus, including judges and security forces.
To give a romantic air to the popular notion about Yasin Malik, the chief of the Editors’ Guild of India, Seema Mustafa, once invited Malik’s wife, Mushaal Hussein, to recount her dreamy and quixotic “love story” with Malik. The heavily-scripted interview struck viewers as an unabashed attempt at humanizing the militant leader.
The JKLF chief also shares a warm camaraderie with Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy. The author is infamous for anti-establishment views, and is accused of instigating Kashmiri youths against the Indian state.
Though the leftist ecosystem is burning the midnight oil to defend Malik, the NIA has stated that the dreaded jihadi has accumulated 12 properties worth 15 crore rupees ($1,927,321.50 USD). The intelligence agency also suspects that Kashmiri terrorist outfits are receiving funds from Pakistani terrorist organizations including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Hizbul Mujahideen, and Dukhtaran-e-Millat.
The court has also framed the charges against several other Kashmiri separatist leaders, including the notorious Bitta Karate, Masarat Alam, Shabbir Shah, Aftab Ahmad Shah, Md Yusuf Shah, Nayeem Khan, Altaf Ahmad Shah, Raja Mehrajuddin Kalwal, Bashir Ahmad Bhat, Md Akbar Khanday, and Shabir Ahmad Shah, among others. On May 19, Special Judge Praveen Singh will preside over the arguments regarding the penalty for the offenses committed by Malik, which is likely to be life imprisonment.
