Yasin Malik, the once-feared Kashmiri separatist leader, is now trying to rewrite his bloody past. Long accused by the Kashmiri Pandit community of leading brutal attacks that forced their mass exodus from the Kashmir Valley, Malik has filed an affidavit in court claiming he’s innocent. He says “circumstances” pushed him into militancy back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, not any personal choice to spread terror.
For Kashmiri Pandits, these words ring hollow. They remember Malik as a key figure in a wave of violence that shattered their lives. Starting around 1988, militants like him targeted Hindus in the Valley, killing hundreds, kidnapping and gang-raping women, looting homes, burning properties, and even desecrating temples. Pandit families lost everything—houses seized, lands grabbed, or sold off for next to nothing under threat. This wasn’t random chaos; it was a calculated push to drive out an ancient community that’s called Kashmir home for over 5,000 years.
Malik’s group lured young Kashmiris into armed militancy, turning a peaceful region into a hotspot of radicalism and fear. In his affidavit, he denies starting the “genocide and gang rape” that sparked the Kashmiri Pandits exodus. He even challenges India’s Intelligence Bureau to dig up old records proving his role. But survivors say the evidence is in their scars. Take the brutal murder of Girija Tickoo, gang-raped and killed in 1990. Or scholar Sarvanand Premi and his son, executed by militants. Radio Kashmir’s Lassa Koul, politician Tikalal Taploo, Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo— the list of victims goes on, with hundreds more unnamed in villages and towns across the Valley.
What’s shocking is how little has changed in over three decades. Despite demands for justice, no full investigation has ever happened into the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits. Other tragedies in India, like the 1984 anti-Sikh riots or the 2002 Gujarat riots, got multiple probes and commissions. Yet the violence against Pandits? It’s been swept under the rug by governments in New Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. Only a handful of police reports from the time exist, and most cases stalled without trials.
Malik isn’t alone in dodging accountability. His old associate, Bitta Karate—real name Farooq Ahmed Dar, known as the “Butcher of Pandits”—once bragged about killing over 20 Pandits in 1990, maybe even 40. His first victim was a friend, Satish Tickoo, shot eight times in the head and chest. Karate got arrested but walked free on bail in 2006 after prosecutors showed little interest in the case. It’s a story that captures the Pandits’ long fight for justice.
Today, with Malik in failing health and facing serious charges, some voices rally to his side. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti recently wrote to Home Minister Amit Shah, asking for a “humanitarian” approach—forgetting that her own sister, Rubaiya Sayeed, identified Malik as her kidnapper in 1989. But what about the over 700,000 Kashmiri Pandits displaced, many still living as refugees? Witnesses from that era are fading away, and without a proper probe into the Kashmir terrorism that targeted them, the full truth risks slipping into denial.
If these “grotesque allegations” were investigated thoroughly, experts say Malik would have faced the noose years ago. Instead, he offers dramatic lines like hanging himself if proven guilty. As the ecosystem that once justified Kashmir militancy keeps downplaying the exodus—blaming figures like the late Governor Jagmohan—the Pandit community warns: Without action, history could twist this into a simple “migration,” erasing the killings and cries forever.
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