FairPoint: From terror to taleteller, Yasin Malik's bid to whitewash Kashmiri Hindu genocide, cleanse crimes

New Delhi, Sep 21 (IANS) Yasin Malik -- ask the Kashmiri Pandit community about him, and they will name him as one of the brutal terrorists responsible for their persecution in the valley. Yet today, this separatist leader, who once spearheaded the terror movement in Kashmir in the name of 'Azaadi', is offering strange explanations.

According to reports based on a purported affidavit he submitted to a court, Malik now claims innocence, suggesting that "circumstances" guided his actions.

Currently in poor health, with the noose of the law tightening around him, Malik has resorted to a "blame everyone but myself" defence. He is far from innocent. He is one of the many who dragged Kashmir into extremism -- torturing and killing hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits, abducting, gang-raping, and murdering Hindu women, looting and burning minority properties, and desecrating temples. He and his men also seized the homes and land of many Pandits, encroaching on them or forcing sales for a pittance.

Malik was among those who lured Kashmiri youth into militancy, transforming a once-harmonious society into one gripped by radicalism and fanaticism. Now, 35 years later, he attempts to whitewash a gory past stained with the blood of innocents, the cries of helpless women, and the grief of a community that lost its 5,000-year-old homeland.

In his affidavit, Malik reportedly stated: "There are unsubstantiated claims that the Kashmiri Pandits’ exodus happened because of the alleged genocide and gang rape initiated by me." He even dares the Intelligence Bureau to produce records from that period.

The Kashmiri Pandits, who have suffered the atrocities, know he is lying. In over three decades, their persecution has never been fully investigated. It is baffling: incidents of violence elsewhere in India are routinely probed, but the violence against this community remains largely ignored. The Gujarat riots had multiple commissions of inquiry; the 1984 anti-Sikh riots are still being investigated. But the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus has never been the subject of a comprehensive probe. Despite repeated demands, no government -- state, or central -- has set up a judicial commission or ordered a thorough investigation.

Successive governments, both in New Delhi and in Jammu and Kashmir, have done little to find and punish the perpetrators. Instead, there have been persistent attempts to downplay the forced exodus of Hindus from the valley. An entrenched ecosystem, which has long tried to justify terrorism in Kashmir, has gone so far as to blame the late Governor Jagmohan for the Pandits’ exodus.

But the facts are stark. Beginning in 1988, a hidden network worked methodically to terrorise Pandits into fleeing. How will terrorists like Malik explain the marking of Pandit houses to target them? How will he justify the kidnappings and killings of hundreds of Hindu men? What excuse can he offer for the brutal gang-rape and murder of Girija Tickoo, Sarla Bhat, Prana Ganjoo, and many others? What about the heinous killings of scholar Sarvanand Premi and his young son, Radio Kashmir Director Lassa Koul, politician Tikalal Taploo, Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, and countless unnamed victims?

"Countless" is no exaggeration -- there is no comprehensive record of the violence, only a few hundred FIRs, most of which have seen no progress. What answer does Malik have for the mass killings of Hindus in the villages and cities of the valley? Yet 35 years later, all he says is: "If at all these grotesque allegations were to be true, I shall hang myself without any trial and let my name go down the annals of history as a blot and curse to mankind."

Had there been a proper probe into the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits, Yasin Malik should have faced the gallows long ago. His close associate Bitta Karate (Farooq Ahmed Dar) openly admitted to killing more than 20 -- perhaps over 40 -- Pandits in 1990, unable even to recall the exact number. Dubbed the "Butcher of Pandits", his first victim was his friend Satish Tickoo, shot eight times in the head and chest. At the time of the attack, Karate was not even masked.

Karate was arrested in November 1990 for various crimes, but in 2006, a TADA court in Jammu granted him bail. The presiding officer, N.D. Wani observed that while the allegations were serious and carried the possibility of a death sentence, the prosecution had shown “total disinterest” in arguing the case, capturing why the beleaguered Pandit community has never received justice.

Now, more than three decades later, Malik emerges with these self-serving "revelations" while his supporters rally around him. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti even urged the Centre to take a "humanitarian view". She wrote an emotional letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, conveniently forgetting the kidnapping of her sister, Rubaiya Sayeed, who identified Malik in the court as her kidnapper.

But what about the injustice done to more than seven lakh Kashmiri Pandits? If justice had prevailed, Malik would have faced the consequences long ago. Instead, the generation that directly suffered is dwindling, and with them, the first-hand witnesses are disappearing.

Today, Malik and his allies claim innocence and frame themselves as victims. A few years from now, some may even label the exodus as mere "migration", denying that anyone was killed or that violence ever occurred. The ecosystem that excuses terrorism will dismiss it all as "imagination".

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

--IANS

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