'Security Forces Missed Multiple Chances To Nab Burhan Wani,' Claims Kashmiri Separatist Yasin Malik In Affidavit To Delhi HC

Srinagar: Kashmiri separatist Yasin Malik, currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, has disclosed in an affidavit to the Delhi High Court that security forces missed multiple opportunities to arrest Hizbul Mujahideen poster boy Burhan Wani. It reads like a classic case of inept policing best captured in the Pink Panther series featuring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, a hilariously incompetent detective who gets it right only by accident.

The revelation comes at a time when, on August 11, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) sought the death penalty for Malik in a terror funding case. According to Malik’s affidavit, the security grid in Jammu and Kashmir noticed Burhan Wani sometime in 2011, after he left his family home at the age of 15. Wani rose to prominence by appearing on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, where he posted photographs of himself in battle gear, wielding an AK-47 and wrote emotional speeches.

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Malik said that Wani romanticised the Mujahid movement, drawing young Kashmiris confined to their homes by crackdowns, curfews, and school closures to his words and images. Malik stated that Wani’s movements, words, images, and contacts in and around Pulwama, about 25 kilometres south of Srinagar, were monitored by tech-savvy intelligence officers in Srinagar and New Delhi.

These officers scrubbed images for hints about his hideouts and accomplices. “Every few days, from approximately October 14 to February 15, 2011, IB officers reported in, using their numeric references, plotting Burhan’s journey, including his meeting with a veteran LeT commander, whom IB knew well,” the affidavit notes. Despite such detailed surveillance, Malik claimed that the authorities failed to arrest Wani on several occasions, which led him to believe there was internal resistance within the security establishment.

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According to the affidavit, Wani was in Arigom on January 7, 2015, and remained there for at least a week. Yet there was no raid or attempt to apprehend him at the two-storey stone house where he stayed. One source close to Burhan provided precise information, which was considered an intelligence coup, but no action followed. When the Special Task Force was finally sent, it reported back that it had “narrowly missed” him. Malik said intelligence officers began questioning the grid’s management and the larger strategy regarding Burhan. “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,” he wrote.

He revealed the Intelligence Bureau had managed to plant a source close to Wani and had identified a safe house used by him. Recruiting a person to pass information on Wani was difficult, but authorities succeeded in recruiting a tout close to his maternal uncle. On Feb 9, at 9.30 pm, Wani returned to Tral, visiting Gamiraz village. An IB asset greeted him and reported he was in the company of a local school teacher and an “overground worker” (OGW), a term used for sympathisers of militants. Multiple reports were filed each day with details such as hamlet, town, timing, company, and subjects discussed, with notes added by units working for the Director General Military Intelligence, which maintained an observation post near Masjid Kirmani in Pulwama.

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The affidavit mentions that in March 2015, one raid on a remote village in Tral came close to catching Burhan, but he slipped through again. IB officers began to question whether this was intentional. Later, when reports came in that Wani was injured and being treated in a friend’s house in Tang Mohalla near the Higher Secondary School, the address was passed on for a raid. However, by the time security forces reached, he had already left. Malik wrote that Burhan was fearless enough to admit himself to SMHS, the main hospital in Srinagar, where nurses treated him despite knowing who he was.

A team 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 IB deduced that the supervising instruction from Delhi was to slow local operations to achieve a deeper strategic goal,” Malik said in his affidavit. “But we could not figure out yet what they had planned for Wani or how the story was supposed to end.”

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Hizb commander Burhan Wani, 22, was killed on July 8, 2016, in a joint operation by J&K Police, RR and CRPF teams at Bumdoora near Kokernag, Anantnag. Forces surrounded the house he was hiding in, leading to a gunfight in which Wani and 2 aides were killed. His death sparked massive unrest in Kashmir, with months of protests, over 90 civilian deaths, and thousands of injuries, marking a turning point.