In affidavit, Yasin Malik speaks on ops against Burhan Wani and his inference

NEw new new delhi: Kashmiri separationist leader Yasin Malik, currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jailhouse, has described in particular the final months of the manhunt for Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, and claimed that security forces missed multiple chances to apprehend him.Malik’s version of events is part of an affidavit he submitted to the Delhi High Court on August 25, 2025. HT has reviewed a copy of the affidavit.On August 11, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) sought the death penalty for the separatist leader in a terror funding case. The court granted Malik four weeks to file his response and posted the matter for November 10.According to Malik’s affidavit, sometime in 2011, the security grid in Jammu and Kashmir noticed Wani, who had left his family home at the age of 15. Wani was on his way to becoming the most wanted militant in the Valley, following his emergence on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Malik said that Wani, who had once planned to become a doctor, romanticised the Mujahid movement, drawing young Kashmiris confined to their homes by crackdowns, curfews, and school closures to his words and images.“Wani posted photographs of himself in battle gear wielding an AK-47 and wrote emotional speeches... His movements, words, images, and contacts, in and around Pulwama, 25 kilometres south of Srinagar, were monitored by tech-savvy intelligence officers there and in New Delhi, who scrubbed the images of hints about his hideouts and his accomplices……Every few days, from approximately October 14 to February 15, different IB. Officers reported in, using their numeric references, plotting Burhan’s journey including his meeting with a veteran LeT commander, whom I.B. Knew well,” he said in his affidavit.To be sure, Malik has already been convicted by the court. The NIA, which has charged him with receiving funds from Pakistan to carry out terrorist activities and orchestrating stone-pelting incidents in 2010 and in 2016 (after Wani’s death), has sought the death penalty. Malik further claimed that the authorities failed to arrest Wani on several occasions despite knowing his exact location, which led him to believe there was internal resistance.The revelation is part of the affidavit, in which Malik has claimed to have been in touch with former PMs, ministers, top intelligence officers to maintain peace in Jammu and Kashmir.“On January 7, 2015, Burhan Wani was in Arigom, and seven days later he was still there. But there was no raid; no cops to call in at the two-storey stone house he stayed in. The IB was puzzled. One source for these sightings was inside Burhan’s circle, which was an intelligence coup. Still no move was made and when the S.T.F. Was sent, it reported back that it had ‘narrowly missed’ Burhan. I.B. Officers began asking questions about the grid’s management and the overarching Burhan strategy. However deep their reporting on him, and however regular the production of HUMINT, whenever they got close, they encountered resistance from other parts of the security services.”Malik also claims that IB had managed to plant a source close to Wani and had even identified a safe house used by the slain militant. According to him, finding someone to pass information on Wani was challenging, but authorities recruited a tout close to Wani’s maternal uncle.“On February 9, at 9:30 p.m., Burhan Wani returned to Tral, visiting Gamiraz village. An IB asset who greeted Burhan personally reported that he was in the company of a local school teacher and an ‘overground worker’ or O/G, security parlance for a sympathiser, rather than a fighter, who was UG or underground. And it went on, with multiple reports posted each day — hamlet, town, timing, company kept — subject discussed, with notes added by units working for the Director General Military Intelligence that had an observation post close to Masjid Kirmani in Pulwama.”Malik then recounts a specific incident where, despite having solid intelligence, authorities could not apprehend Wani .“The IB was startled to learn that one raid — on a remote village in Tral — had come close to Burhan in March 2015, but again, somehow he slipped through the net. Was this intentional, they wondered? When IB Srinagar heard that Burhan was injured and being treated in a friend’s house in Tang Mohalla, near the Higher Secondary School, the address was put forward for another raid, but it took an age to organise and by the time security forces reached there Burhan was gone, again. Fearless, he admitted himself to S.M.H.S., the main hospital in Srinagar, and under the noses of the security establishment he was bandaged up by nurses who knew who he was and took the risk anyhow. A party sent to intercept him at the hospital arrived too late and he escaped to his cousin’s house in Rajbagh. The grid knew. It was solid, accurate and expansive. The I.B. Deduced that the supervising instruction from Delhi was to slow local operations to achieve a deeper strategic goal,” Malik said.“But we could not figure out yet what they had planned for Burhan Wani or how the story was supposed to end.”