Modi government honoured 1994 ceasefire pact: Yasin Malik tells Delhi HC

Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik has told the Delhi High Court that every Union government — from PV Narasimha Rao to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term — honoured a ceasefire understanding with him after he gave up arms in 1994.

In an affidavit, Malik said: “I was provided bail in all the 32 pending militancy related TADA cases as part for a single bail order. None of these cases against me were perused, thereafter, in terms of understanding under the ceasefire agreement, during the dispensations of PV Narsimha Rao. The promise was kept by every single dispensation of the Indian government, including PM Narendra Modi in his first phase till 2019. All these dispensations kept on engaging with me.”

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The affidavit, running through his decades-long political journey, recounts how Malik transitioned from being the “commander-in-chief” of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) to publicly declaring a unilateral ceasefire in 1994, a move he admitted was “one of the most unpopular stances in Kashmir.”

Malik said he was first arrested in August 1990 and lodged in Tihar Jail before being shifted to a guest house in Mehrauli. There, he claimed, BSF chief Ashok Patel, IB Special Director Dr Mathur, and J&K DGP JN Saxena met him almost daily in an attempt to draw him into dialogue. He refused repeated overtures to meet then Prime Minister Chandrashekhar and was later moved to Agra Central Jail, where efforts to persuade him continued.

He described how deteriorating health led to open-heart surgery at AIIMS in 1992. Even in hospital, he said, Intelligence officers and civil society figures such as journalist Kuldip Nayar, Rajmohan Gandhi and Justice Rajinder Sachar engaged with him. According to Malik, foreign diplomats also urged him to abandon militancy.

Later, at a sub-jail in a Mehrauli farmhouse, he met then Home Minister Rajesh Pilot and IAS officer Wajahat Habibullah. At one dinner meeting in Maharani Bagh, Malik recalled being asked why he had chosen violence despite Kashmir’s non-violent history. “I briefed them as to what had happened with us during the non-violent democratic movement; drawing a consensus they all replied unanimously that you are justified with the stand undertaken and we had simply no idea here in New Delhi for what happened with Kashmiri youth,” he said.

According to Malik, his interlocutors urged him to restart political struggle through peaceful means, assuring him of “genuine political space” and telling him that Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had personally directed efforts to bring him back into non-violent politics.

After three years of negotiations, Malik was released in May 1994. He returned to Srinagar, held a press conference, and declared that he would pursue a non-violent democratic struggle “come what may.” He claimed militants branded him a traitor and even abducted him, but he managed to escape and stayed committed to non-violence despite “over 20,000 active militants” being present in the Valley at the time.

Malik said successive governments honoured the understanding by not pursuing pending TADA cases and by continuing engagement with him till 2019.