The Jammu and Kashmir Police’s State Investigation Agency (SIA) on Tuesday carried out raids at multiple locations in Srinagar, including the residence of banned Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik, in connection with the 1990 killing of Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat.

Yasin Malik is currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail.

Officials said the searches were linked to the abduction and murder of 27-year-old Sarla Bhat, a resident of Anantnag and posted at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar.

She had stayed back in the Valley when most members of her community left in the early 1990s.

According to police records, Sarla was allegedly abducted in April 1990 by terrorists and her bullet-riddled body was recovered the next day from Srinagar’s Soura area.

The case, originally registered at Nigeen Police Station, is now being investigated by the SIA.

“Today’s raids were conducted at the residences of several former JKLF leaders, including Yasin Malik, Javid Mir, Peer Noor ul Haq Shah alias Air Marshal Noor Khan, Reyaz Kabir Sheikh (brother of the late Hamid Sheikh), Bashir Ahmad Gojri, Feroz Ahmad Khan, Kaiser Ahmad Tiploo and Ghulam Mohammad Taploo, all residents of Srinagar district,” sources said.

Malik and Mir were among the first five JKLF commanders to take up arms in 1989.

Malik later declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1994 and publicly renounced violence.

This is the second major case that has been reopened and being investigated by the SIA.

In 2023, SIA reopened the case of the killing of retired Kashmiri Pandit judge Neelkanth Ganjoo by terrorists in 1989.

Ganjoo, had sentenced to death JKLF founder Mohammad Maqbool Bhat.