Malik and I never hit it off, he wanted an exclusive relationship: Dulat
‘He was great friends with Wajahat Habbibullah and Ajit Doyal’
Former RAW chief, A S Dulat has claimed that his negotiations with Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik never materialized and that he wanted an exclusive relationship. In his controversial book “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years”, Dulat claimed that Malik had close ties with senior IAS officer, Wajahat Habbibullah and his IB colleague Ajit Doyal.“The first occasion I met Yasin was in a house in Delhi. He was already there when I walked into the room and the first thing he did was put his feet up on the coffee table and light a cigarette,” Dulat writes.
“Hum aap se kya baat kar sakte hain (What can we talk about)? Hum to azadi chahhate hai (We want freedom)” Malik told Dulat to which he replied “wo azadi aapko nahi milne wali hain”.
“Ek Azadi hai jou hamare constitution ke dairey mein hain, uske bare main sochye (Think about the freedom under our constitution),” Dulat writes.
He then goes to say that Malik was very sceptical about the whole thing “but during the 1991-94 period he mellowed down to become a Gandhian”.
“From 1991 to May 1994, when he was released, Yasin softened. Che Guevara became a Gandhi and began talking about giving up the gun and adopting peaceful forms of agitation,” Dulat writes.
The second time they met, Dulat states that Malik accused him of break-up of the JKLF.
“What happened is that while Yasin was in jail another fellow named Shabir Siddiqui had formed a breakaway faction of the front. Yasin thought that we had set up Siddiqui as the leader of the breakaway faction,” he writes.
“Yeh sab aapki game hai (This is your game),” Malik told me.
“Yasin Saheb,” I said, “Aisa hai ki yeh hamari game nahin hai. Aap unse puchh lijiye. Aur main toh Delhi mai baitha hoon, aap Srinagar walon say puchhiye (It is not our game. You ask him. I am in Delhi, ask people in Srinagar),” Dulat writes.
He writes that they met once more after but never hit it off. “His discomfort with me stemmed from the fact that he knew I talked to many Kashmiris and he wanted an exclusive relationship,” he writes.
However, Dulat writes it was okay as Malik was “great friends” with two other people, IAS officer Wajahat Habbibullah and his IB colleague Ajit Doyal.
“I had heard Wajahat speaking to Yasin over phone, Haan phir sunao beta kaise ho,” Dulat writes.
Dulat said when he was in the Prime Minister’s Office, Sajad Lone suggested that he and Yasin could link up.
“That’s a great idea…how do we get about it,” Dulat asked Sajad.
“Get Yasin here,” I said. “The three of us will get into a room and we will stay there no matter if it takes 24 hours or 48 hours or whatever. We can find a formula which is acceptable to you guys,” Dulat writes, adding, “sadly it did not materialize”.
