JKLF chief Yasin Malik among 5 named in chargesheet in 1990 Sarla Bhat killing case

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File photo of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Yasin Malik. | Photo Credit: ANI

After 36 years, the Jammu and Kashmir Police’s special cell, State Investigation Agency (SIA), on Monday (June 29, 2026) named Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik among five others in the chargesheet filed in the killing of Kashmiri Pandit Sarla Bhat, a nurse at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences killed in 1990.

According to the SIA, the investigation “conclusively established that the killing of Bhat was not an isolated act of violence but part of a larger terrorist conspiracy orchestrated under the command and control of the JKLF”.

The investigation, the SIA said, revealed the involvement of Malik, then JKLF chief commander; Khurshid Ahmad Chalkoo; Abdul Hamid Sheikh; Mohammad Yousuf Sofi alias Idrees and Ghulam Mohammad Taploo “in planning and executing the abduction and brutal killing”.

The SIA said Bhat was “subjected to brutal torture and physical assault, and thereafter horrendously killed through automatic rifle fire at Omer Colony, Malbagh, Srinagar”.

Three among the five accused are dead, including Sheikh, Sofi and Taploo. Malik, who was sentenced to two counts of life imprisonment and five 10-year prison sentences in 2022, is lodged in Tihar jail and also faces trial in two other major cases, including kidnapping of the then Union Home Minister’s daughter in 1989 and an attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) in 1990.

The SIA said legal proceedings, including proclamation proceedings, have been initiated against absconding terrorist Chalkoo, “who pulled the trigger” and is believed to have exfiltrated to Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir.

The J&K Police termed the 737-page chargesheet as “a landmark development and a defining moment in J&K’s fight against terrorism”. “The voluminous chargesheet, painstakingly compiled after an exhaustive investigation, brings together a formidable body of oral, documentary, forensic, ballistic, medical and electron