Yasin Malik | The poster boy of separatism in Kashmir 

The JKLF leader has a complex past of both fighting and engaging India, but he has remained a hardliner when it comes to his ideology 

The Jammu-Kashmir Plebiscite Front (JKPF), the parent organisation of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was founded by Maqbool Bhat, a Kashmiri school teacher, in 1966, the same year Yasin Malik was born. Last week, Malik, who is the current chairman of the JKLF, was sentenced to life imprisonment in an illegal cross-border funding case.

Amanullah Khan, from the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), was the first chairman of the JKLF, set up in 1977 for “liberating” J&K from both India and Pakistan. Khan died in Pakistan in 2016. The JKLF, as an armed group, came under spotlight in 1984 when its men living in the U.K. kidnapped Ravindra Hareshwar Mhatre, a 48- year-old Indian diplomat, from a bus stop. The first ever kidnapping by the JKLF was a desperate bid to get its jailed patron Bhat released. But it didn’t work out as per plan. Mhatre's body was found three days later in Birmingham. The incident spurred the case proceedings against Bhat, who was hanged in 1984 in Tihar, for the murder of a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officer in 1968.

After this incident, the JKLF faded from the scene till December 8, 1989 when the outfit, with just 40 members in its ranks, kidnapped the then Union Home Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed's daughter, while she was on the way home from her medical college in Srinagar, at around 3:45 p.m.

Moosa Raza, who was the J&K Chief Secretary in 1989, has described the impact of the kidnapping on the security situation in the state in his book, Kashmir: Land of Regrets: “The Intelligence Bureau chief was as much in the dark as the local police. The JKLF claimed responsibility and demanded the release of their members from the custody in exchange of Ms. Sayeed. The JKLF decided to do abduction so that it could become a cause célèbre.”

On the ground, the incident proved as a cause célèbre for the JKLF and its aim was to galvanise ground support for its ideology in Kashmir, as their five men were released in exchange of Ms. Sayeed. It empowered the JKLF further. Later, the outfit’s widely-known HAJY group — Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Majeed Wani, Javed Ahmad Mir and Yasin Malik — who had crossed to PoK in 1988 for arms training, became the poster boys of militancy in Kashmir.

The popularity of the group made even Pakistan rethink its Kashmir policy, and left many in the deep state edgy. It was reflected in the floating of the Hizbul Mujahideen militant outfit, which, contrary to the JKLF's goal of “complete independence”, demanded accession of J&K to Pakistan.

Frail-looking, but agile and angry Malik became the face of the JKLF after his two aides Hamid Sheikh and Ashfaq Wani died in two separate encounters in Srinagar by 1992. Before his JKLF role, Malik, who comes from a humble dwelling in Srinagar’s Maisuma locality, was a polling agent in the Batamaloo area of the Muslim United Front (MUF) candidate Mohammad Yusuf Shah, who, after his defeat in the 1987 rigged polls, became Syed Salahuddin of the United Jehad Council.