Yasin Malik is demanding death sentence for himself, hoping to garner sympathy from India's political and media bigwigs who had turned him into a youth icon some years back. Lest we forget his contribution to the raging fire of insurgency that turned the ‘heaven on earth into a veritable hell’, this brief note will help put things in perspective.

His transition from being the campaign manager of Mohd Yousuf Shah (Amir, Jamaat e Islami, Srinagar district), whom the world now knows as Syed Sallah ud Din, to being the chief assassinator of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in the initial years of insurgency between 1988-1990, was quite rapid and dramatic. Rajiv Gandhi-Farooq Abdullah coalition blatantly rigged the state elections of 1987. Mohd Yousuf Shah, who is widely believed to have won from Amira Kadal constituency against Farooq Abdullah’s close relative, Mohi ud din Shah, became livid with rage when the results were announced in favor of the latter. This blatant misuse of state machinery to overturn peoples’ verdict served as a trigger for what happened later. Let me mention that Pakistan had planned the events in Kashmir meticulously and would have found other means to trigger the armed uprising in Kashmir, for which ground work had been completed between 1977, when Bhutto was toppled and 1988, when Zia Ul Haque was assassinated.

To cut the long story short, after the rigged elections, it did not take much for Yasin Mallik to emerge as the assassinator in chief of JKLF. That is why he was in the forefront of every killing that took place between in 1987 and end of 1989, much before the events of the night of January 19,1990.He, along with Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Wani, Javed Mir became the face of Jihad during this period and were known by the acronym of HAJY. Following were some of their victims during this period (list not exhaustive):

1. A K Ganjoo April 1987
2. Swami K Nath Dec 1988
3. Tika Lal Taploo.. Sept 1989.
4. Justice Neela Kanth Ganjoo Oct 1989
5. Sheela Tikoo Oct 1989
6. Prem Nath Bhat Dec 1989.
7. Pawan Kumar Dec (?)1989
8. RPN Singh Dec (?) 1989

After the events of 19 January, 1990, the JKLF’s hit squad led by Yasin Malik created mayhem, their victims being largely Kashmiri Pandits, with a sprinkling of prominent Muslims with whom JKLF had political differences. JKLF largely succeeded in cleansing out 400000 Kashmiri Pandits and non-Kashmiri Hindus out of Kashmir, turning them into refugees overnight.

2005 vs now.
Same prayer. Same soil. Two leaders side by side after the Kashmir earthquake.
Today Imran Khan sits in a Pakistani jail.⁰Yasin Malik sits in an Indian one.
History did not forget the photograph.⁰The photograph just outlived their freedom.#ImranKhan #YasinMalik… pic.twitter.com/xj21MXW58F
— DR ADNAN ALI (@DrMalko) September 3, 2026

It is a damned shame that a leading rabid Islamist, whose hands are red with the blood of innocent people, should have been invited by the former P.M., to meet him in Delhi and used to be feted by Luyten's cabal. Yasin Malik’s activities did not end with the events of Jan 19, 1990. He was later involved with the kidnapping of Mufti Mohammad Syed's daughter, Rubaiya Syed, and the killing of the following prominent figures (list only illustrative, not exhaustive).

1. Lassa Kaul, Director Door Darshan.
2. Sarla Bhat.
3. 5 IAF officers.
4. Mushir ul Hassan, Vice Chancellor Kashmir University and his P.A.
and many others.
5. Maulana Masoodi.
6.Mir Mustaffa.

In the meantime, JKLF had given the responsibility of killing other smaller and lesser-known Kashmiri Pandits, including Satish Tikoo, Anil Bhan, Ashok Qazi, Girija Tikoo, and many others to the lower ranks of JKLF cadres, like Bitta Karate, Mushtaq Latram, etc.

In keeping with the then government's policy of appeasement, even ruthless and brutal Jihadis like Yasin Malik would be invited to Delhi and given an audience with the Prime Minister. The actual Godi Media did not lag behind in lionizing this murderer. He was feted and introduced as a youth icon to gullible people as some kind of a modern-day Mahatma Gandhi. The same man who sat on a Dharna in Lahore along with India's greatest enemy, the master mind of 26/11 Mumbai carnage, Hafeez Syed, was provided captive audience to peddle his lies. There could not have been a more brazen disrespect shown to our martyrs than this.

He knows that death will release him from the suffocating cell of four walls of his prison. But as long as he stays confined to these four walls, he will die every day. That is his punishment