"Hang Yasin Malik": Sarla Bhat's Cousin Recalls Horror, Slams Political Outreach

For the family of Sarla Bhat, the fresh chargesheet has revived a flicker of hope over wounds buried for decades. And PK Bhat, cousin of the slain Kashmiri Pandit nurse, wants no clemency for Yasin Malik, the jailed JKLF chief and mastermind behind her 1990 abduction, torture, and killing. "He should be hanged for the heinous crime he has committed,” he said.

Speaking to NDTV, his voice hardened as he recalled ex-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hosting Malik for peace talks in Delhi in 2006. Even today, he says, some politicians lobby for the release of such 'political prisoners'. "Yasin Malik is not a political prisoner. He is a murderer. Call him what he is."

"Things did not end with Sarla's killing,” he said, "The horror continued even after her death."

"When her last rites were performed, about 200 young men stormed the cremation ground. They desecrated her ashes - trampled them under their feet - and taunted, 'You're still here?'"

"We had to beg to collect at least a fistful of ashes. Somehow, we gathered a fistful. That same night, they bombed her house too. After that, we had no choice. We fled Kashmir."

Last week a 737-page chargesheet filed by Kashmir's State Investigation Agency named Malik as the mastermind behind Sarla Bhat's murder. On that development PK Bhat said: "Justice delayed is justice denied. But now there is a glimmer of hope… that justice will be served."

READ | Yasin Malik Named Mastermind In 36-Year-Old Kashmiri Pandit Nurse Sarla Bhat Murder Case

"Her parents… poor souls… they never got to see justice. Now maybe her soul will find some peace. Otherwise, we had given up hope… we had completely lost hope."

On the morning of April 18, 1990, Bhat, a staff nurse at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar, was abducted from near her hospital, tortured, and shot dead with an automatic rifle at Omer Colony, Malbagh. She was among the last Kashmiri Pandit women still at her post as the Valley descended into one of the darkest chapters in its modern history.

PK Bhat told NDTV that after escaping the cremation ground with a fistful of her ashes, they rushed home - i.e., her parents' home in Anantnag - and placed it in a container, hoping to arrange for a vehicle to transport it and her belongings out of the city. But the next morning brought with it fresh terror. "…at 5 am a blast brought down the wall above the main gate. So, leaving everything behind, they (her parents) grabbed a briefcase and her ashes and left."

There was no police, he said. "Only the Army was outside; we informed personnel and they accompanied them as far as Khannabal (where) they were put into a vehicle and taken away."

Pointing to other high-profile murders at the time and questioning the delay in executing Malik, PK Bhat told NDTV: "The point is Yasin Malik should at least be given the death sentence. He ought to receive capital punishment… that is the thing. It just seems so strange (that he hasn't)."