By Ajay Kaul
Because of his terrorist acts, numerous families were destroyed, several women became widows and many children were orphaned in their very young age.
The same brutal terrorist now claims he is worried about the fate of his own wife and daughter.
This is Yasin Malik, the chief of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) terrorist outfit, who murdered many innocent people in cold blood in Kashmir between 1989 and 1994.
The same butcher, who was the face of terror in Kashmir for several years, is now portraying himself as a victim and his wife and child as sufferers.
He has claimed, in a publicized affidavit filed in a court in Srinagar, that he was terminating his 17-year-old marriage with Pakistani national Mushaal.
The affidavit by the 60-year-old terrorist was filed in relation to a trial against him in the case of murder of a young Kashmiri Pandit nurse in 1990.
Malik said he decided to give divorce to his 40-year-old wife so that she does not have “to live her whole life carrying the burden” of his imprisonment “or living like a widow.”
He also claimed that he has been unable to speak to his wife and daughter for eight years because he was not permitted telephone calls or video conferencing with them.
It is the same person who personally killed or ordered murders of scores of innocent people in Kashmir.
They included 4 personnel of the Indian Air Force (IAF), including an officer, whom he shot dead in cold blood when they were waiting for official bus at a bus stand in Srinagar on January 25, 1990. He has publicly acknowledged that killing.
His victims were someone’s husband, someone’s father, someone’s son, someone’s daughter or someone’s brother.
While he says he does not want his wife to live as a widow, the widows of those killed by him have been waiting for justice even so many decades after. In fact, they were widowed in the prime of their youth and were forced by him to live without their dear husbands.
While he says he has not been able to talk to his daughter for eight years, there are scores of daughters whom he deprived from speaking to their fathers forever.
Suspicions over Marriage
Irrespective of merits of his affidavit, the marriage itself and the woman he calls his wife have always remained a subject of suspicion and intrigue.
While talking about his intention to give “divorce” to Mushaal, Malik did not mention the fact that the two have hardly lived together since their marriage in February 2009.
Their marriage ceremony was conducted in Rawalpindi in Pakistan and it was 9 months later that Mushaal came to Srinagar to Yasin Malik’s residence.
Thereafter, she stayed in Srinagar only for a few months and returned to Pakistan, never to come back.
Mushaal is publicly described as a “painter” and an “activist” but her credentials have remained under the shroud of mystery.
For the public consumption, the UK-born 19-year-old Mushaal fell in love with 39-year-old Yasin Malik when they came face-to-face in Pakistan in 2005.
The JKLF chief had travelled to Pakistan as part of a Kashmiri separatist delegation with the permission of the government of India which was searching for ways to have a dialogue process.
According to the much-publicised theory, Yasin and Mushaal came in contact during that trip and it was love at first sight.
The decision to get married was instant, including for Yasin Malik who had vowed not to marry because of his commitment to the “Kashmir cause”.
Mushaal, who is said to be a Post-Graduate in Political Economy from the London School of Economics, belongs to a well-connected family of Karachi affiliated with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s PML-N party.
Born in Pakistan into an ethnic Kashmiri family in Karachi on October 23, 1986, Mushaal’s late father MA Hussein Mullick was an economist who headed the economics department at Bonn University in Germany.
Her mother Rehana Hussein Mullick has been the secretary general of the women’s wing of PML-N.
Why the suspicion?
It has remained a mystery how and why Mushaal, an elite UK-based young girl, chose to marry a person double his age and involved in a separatist movement for which he remained in and out of Jail.
Being a Pakistani national, she must have been conscious from the beginning that getting married to someone in India, particularly in Kashmir, would entail lots of restrictions. The curbs and scrutiny would be more considering the kind of person Yasin Malik was.
Despite this, why did she choose to take Yasin Malik her husband? What was the compulsion?
In fact, when the news about the marriage plans broke, some sections in Kashmir raised questions and slammed the move.
A journalist and newspaper publisher in Kashmir went to the extent of holding a press conference where he referred to Yasin Malik’s vow not to marry for the sake of “Kashmir movement”.
The Journalist also said that even if Yasin Malik wanted to get married, there was no dearth of good and beautiful girls in Kashmir. He asked, “Then why did he choose a girl from across the border?”
Marriage – A Game Plan of Pakistan?
There have been doubts that she was planted into Kashmir by ISI to further its nefarious agenda.
There is certain logic attached to this suspicion.
Mushaal’s marriage to Yasin Malik gave Pakistan a sort of locus since a citizen of its own got a personal reason to talk about Kashmir everywhere in the world.
It gave Pakistan a better handle to target India over Kashmir. Rather than some Pakistani official or politician talking about Kashmir at the United Nations, they got a better person in the form of “wife” of a so-called “leader” of the Valley to speak at the global forum and berate India.
And that is what Mushaal did as she returned to Pakistan after a brief stay with Yasin Malik.
Pakistan deputed her to the United Nations to raise the issue of so-called human rights in Kashmir.
Under her name, Pakistan also sent letters to the international human rights organisations.
Mushaal, as the “wife of Kashmiri leader”, also gave interviews to international media and issued statements, to criticize India.
She portrayed herself as a “victim” wife and it was hugely amplified by Pakistan.
For all such services, Pakistan did reward her.
In 2018, she was given National Women’s Rights award by the Pakistan government.
In 2020, she, with the active help and soliciting by Pakistan, was given a United Nations Women’s award for peace and human rights.
Then in August 2023, she was appointed as Adviser to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on Human Rights and Women’s Empowerment. She held that post until March last year.
All these aspects lead to questions about the real motive behind the so-called marriage.
Had it been a normal marriage, Mushaal should have lived with Yasin and stayed by his side through thick and thin.
But, clearly the intent was something else – to use the so-called marriage as a pretext for hurting India, even if the husband got no benefit. (NVI)
