On September 22, 2025, left-leaning portal The Wire published an article written by Mehbooba Mufti, president of Jammu and Kashmir’s People’s Democratic Party and a former Chief Minister of the state.

In her piece, Mufti attempted to whitewash the crimes of convicted terrorists Afzal Guru and Yasin Malik, shifting the blame instead onto the Indian state. She accused India of showing “institutional duplicity” in handling Guru, who was executed for the 2001 Parliament attack, and Malik, who was convicted for waging war against the nation.

In her narrative, Mufti shockingly described these terrorists as “whistleblowers” and “peace-builders,” insisting they were convicted through “a deeply flawed legal process.” She claimed that Afzal Guru was denied a fair investigation and that he was “executed to satisfy the collective conscience of the country.” Similarly, she alleged that Yasin Malik was not convicted for waging war but punished for being part of a “peace process” that she argued had the backing of the state.

Mufti framed the debate as a moral question, writing: “This is not just about two men; it is about how we, as a nation, choose to confront our past and whether we’re willing to learn from it. Do we want peace or permanent punishment? Do we seek truth or only what is politically convenient?” Drawing parallels between Guru and Malik, she added: “Separated by time, context, and ideology, both men now stand united not only in memory, but in what their cases expose: how the Indian state has used individuals to serve short-term goals and then discarded or punished them once they outlived their usefulness.”

Afzal Guru was a whistleblower: Mufti

Mufti expressed her deep sympathies for Afzal Guru, who was hanged in 2013 for his role in the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. She referred to a letter he allegedly wrote from jail, where he named a senior Special Task Force officer, Davinder Singh, as the one who forced him into “helping the very people later accused of the parliament attack.” According to Mufti, Singh’s later arrest while transporting terrorists in Kashmir should absolve Afzal of blame.

She argued that Afzal and Singh received completely different treatment, lamenting: “Afzal was branded a terrorist. Singh was quietly sidelined. One was executed and the other, protected.” Questioning the justice system, she asked: “What does it say about our justice system when a man names a police officer who is later arrested for terrorism, and yet, it is the whistleblower who is hanged, while the officer remains shielded?”

By her reasoning, revealing the name of another criminal should negate one’s own crimes. What she ignored is that Singh is undergoing the same judicial process that Afzal faced. Afzal Guru was punished for his proven acts, while Singh continues to stand trial for the charges against him and will face sentencing if convicted.

Yasin Malik is a peace-builder: Mufti

Mufti also extended her sympathy toward Yasin Malik, the JKLF terrorist convicted under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in 2022 for terror funding. Malik had earlier kidnapped her own sister Rubaiya Sayeed in 1989 and was charged with the killing of four Indian Air Force personnel. Despite his crimes, Mufti portrayed him as a man used by the Indian state for peace outreach.

She wrote: “Yasin Malik, once a militant, renounced violence in 1994 and committed himself to political dialogue. For more than two decades, he was embraced by the very state that would later condemn him.” She further claimed that Indian intelligence agencies encouraged Malik to meet Pakistan-based terrorist Hafiz Saeed to urge a shift from violence to dialogue. According to her, this makes Malik’s conviction unfair, even though it was based on direct evidence of his links with Hafiz Saeed.

Mufti asked the Indian state to take Malik at his word when he claimed to have renounced violence, overlooking the fact that courts found him guilty beyond doubt. By equating Guru and Malik’s cases, she suggested that it was not terrorism but Indian justice itself that had failed. She concluded by urging that the so-called “wrongs” be seen “not as Kashmiri grievances but as Indian failures.”

Yet, what unites Guru and Malik is not their alleged use by the state, as Mufti insists, but their clear identity as terrorists who targeted India’s integrity and sovereignty.

Terrorists Afzal Guru and Yasin Malik

India still remembers the tragedy of December 13, 2001, when terrorists stormed the Indian Parliament. The attack claimed the lives of nine people, including eight security personnel and a gardener, while 16 others, among them 13 security staff, were injured. Afzal Guru was arrested for his involvement, and after a year-long trial, he was sentenced to death in August 2002. His execution took place in February 2013.

JKLF leader Yasin Malik is serving life imprisonment after his conviction by a Special NIA court in May 2022 for terror funding under UAPA. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two concurrent life terms along with five 10-year sentences. Malik is also facing trial for the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed and the killing of five IAF personnel in 1990. His name has also been linked to the assassination of Justice Neelkanth Ganju, who had sentenced JKLF terrorist Maqbool Bhat to death, as well as the murder of Lassa Kaul, the former director of Doordarshan in Srinagar.