In an affidavit whose contents have gripped India, Malik claims he worked with multiple Indian prime ministers and intelligence agents, who facilitated meetings with Pakistani armed groups in a bid to broker peace.

For well over three decades, Yasin Malik has held the reputation of a top-ranked pro-freedom leader from Indian-administered Kashmir.

A leader who became synonymous with the armed struggle that broke out in Kashmir seeking independence from India in the late 1980s, then turned to the advocacy of peaceful, nonviolent resistance, Malik is currently serving a life sentence in a New Delhi jail. A villain in the eyes of many in the Indian security services and the country’s strategic establishment, Malik has also been distrusted by Pakistan, which New Delhi has long accused of supporting armed violence in Kashmir.

But a sensational affidavit that the 59-year-old filed in the Delhi High Court in late August has gripped India over the past weeks because of a series of sensational claims that it makes – and that former Indian officials and analysts say might have at least some element of truth in them.

Malik’s petition challenges the dominant narrative both about his own decades-long journey as a separatist and the Indian state’s engagement with the rebellion movement in the disputed region, also claimed by Pakistan.

At the heart of Malik’s claims is a central, stunning question: Was he actually an Indian intelligence asset all along?

What’s the thrust of Yasin Malik’s claims?

In his 84-page affidavit, Malik claims that since the 1990s – by which time the armed revolt by young Kashmiris against New Delhi’s rule was at its peak – he had been engaging with top authorities in the Indian government in its bid to resolve the conflict.

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Malik says he met several Indian prime ministers and federal ministers, heads of the country’s intelligence agencies, members of the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and even two prominent Hindu religious seers who called on his residence in Srinagar “umpteen numbers of times” as part of a back‑channel diplomacy sanctioned by the Indian government to further the peace efforts in Kashmir.