New Delhi, September 21 (IANS) Yasin Malik – Ask the Kashmiri Pandit community about him, and they would name him as one of the cruel terrorists responsible for their harassment in the valley. Nevertheless, today, this separatist leader, who once led a terrorist movement in Kashmir in the name of ‘Azadi’, is giving strange clarification.
According to reports based on an alleged affidavit presented in a court, Malik now claims innocence, suggesting that “circumstances” directed his actions.
Currently in poor health, with tightening around him, Malik “blames everyone but resorted to defense”. He is far from innocent. He is one of the many people who pulled Kashmir into extremism-tortured and killed hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits, kidnapping, gang-rape, and killing Hindu women, looting and burning minority properties, and provoking temples. He and his men confiscated the houses and land of many Pandits, encroached on them or forced them to sell for a bile.
Malik was among those who wooed Kashmiri youth in extremism, dodging the society once with fundamentalism and bigotry. Now, after 35 years, he attempts to whitened a past past with the blood of innocent people, the cry of helpless women and the grief of a community that lost his 5,000 -year -old motherland.
In his affidavit, Malik allegedly stated: “This claims that the migration of Kashmiri Pandits was caused by the alleged massacre and gang rape started by me.” He even dared to bureau to make records from that period.
Kashmiri Pandits, who have faced atrocities, know that he is lying. In three decades, their oppression has not been thoroughly investigated. It is shocking: In India, incidents of violence elsewhere are regularly investigated, but violence against this community is largely ignored. There were many commissions of investigation in Gujarat riots; The 1984 anti -Sikh riots are still being investigated. But the caste cleaning of Kashmiri Hindus has never been a matter of comprehensive investigation. Despite repeated demands, any government – state, or central – has established the judicial commission or ordered a thorough investigation.
In New Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir, gradual governments do very little work to find and punish criminals. Instead, continuous efforts have been made to reduce the forced migration of Hindus from the valley. A complicated ecosystem, which has long been tried to justify terrorism in Kashmir, has so far gone to convict the late Governor Jagmohan for the migration of Pandits.
But the facts are clear. Starting from 1988, a hidden network worked systematically to terrorize the pundits. How will pundits explain the marking of houses to target them like Malik? How will he justify the kidnapping and killings of hundreds of Hindu men? What can he give for the brutal gang-bottle and murder of Girija Tiko, Sarla Bhat, Pran Ganju and many others? What about scholar Saravanand Premi and his young son, Radio Kashmir director Lassa Cool, politician Tikalal Toplu, Justice Neelkanth Ganju and countless unnamed victims?
“Countless” is no exaggeration – there is no comprehensive record of violence, only a few hundred firings, most of which have not seen any progress. What is Malik’s answer to the mass killings of Hindus in villages and cities of the valley? Nevertheless, after 35 years, he says: “If all of them should be true in the allegations, I will hang myself without any test and let my name go down as a smear to the history of history and go as a curse for mankind.”
If there was a proper investigation in the massacre of Kashmiri Pandits, Yasin Malik should have faced hanging long ago. His close aide Bitta Karate (Farooq Ahmed Dar) openly admitted to killing more than 20 – perhaps more than 40 in 1990 – pundits, unable to remember the exact number. Dubbing “Butcher of Pandits”, his first victim was his friend Satish Tiku, he shot eight times in his head and chest. At the time of the attack, karate was also not masked.
Karate was arrested for various offenses in November 1990, but in 2006, he was granted bail by a TADA court in Jammu. Presiding officer, ND Wani noticed that the charges were serious and carried forward the possibility of death sentence, the prosecution had shown “total indifferent” in arguing on the matter, capturing that the Pandit community has never received justice.
Now, after more than three decades, Malik emerges with these self-serving “revelations”, while his supporters rally around him. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti also urged the Center to take “human approach”. He wrote a emotional letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who easily forgot the kidnapping of his sister, Rubaiya Saeed, who identified Malik as his kidnapper in court.
But what about the injustice done for more than seven lakh Kashmiri Pandits? If justice was strong, Malik would have faced the results long ago. Instead, the generation that has been directly suffering decreases, and with them, the first hand witnesses are disappearing.
Today, Malik and his associates claim innocence and frame themselves as victims. A few years later, some people can only label exodus as “migration”, stating that anyone was killed or that violence was ever done. The ecosystem that excuses terrorism will dismiss it as “imagination”.
(Deepika Bhan can be contacted
,
DPB/SVN