The Jammu and Kashmir State Investigation Agency (SIA) has filed a comprehensive 737-page chargesheet in a special TADA/POTA court, naming terrorist Yasin Malik, former chief commander of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), as the mastermind behind the abduction, torture, and murder of Sarla Bhatt in 1990.
On April 18, 1990, then 27-year-old Sarla Bhatt, a staff nurse at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar, was abducted near the hospital. She was brutally assaulted and shot dead with an automatic rifle in Omer Colony, Malbagh.
The chargesheet alleges the killing was part of JKLF’s systematic campaign of targeted violence against Kashmiri Pandits aimed at instilling fear and forcing their mass exodus from the Valley.
The SIA has stated that the JKLF had a fabricated pretext, falsely accusing Bhatt of passing information against their members. Even though most Kashmiri Pandits had already fled the valley at that point, Sarla had continued to work at the hospital.
Key evidence includes eyewitness accounts, protected witnesses, medical and ballistic reports, a terror claim note, and electronic records.
Yasin Malik, currently in judicial custody serving a life sentence in a separate terror-financing case, faces charges of abduction, murder, criminal conspiracy, and offences under the Ranbir Penal Code, TADA, and the Arms Act. Khurshid Ahmad Chalkoo, another JKLF terrorist who had shot and killed Sarla Bhatt, is named as a co-accused, along with three other JKLF terrorists who are dead.
After more than three decades, due to the consistent calls for justice for the Kashmiri Pandit community, the SIA had reopened Sarla Bhatt’s case investigations in 2025. Senior IPS officer Nitish Kumar, present ADG of CID/SIA, and IPS Divya Dev, SP, SIA, led the investigation that involved tracking down other nurses who worked at SKIMS at that time, papers, digital evidence, electronic and other records.
