Separatist leader and JKLF chief Yasin Malik is engaged to Mashal Malik, a Pakistani painter who is studying in London. Since Malik is in jail after his arrest in Srinagar last week, it was left to three of his friends in Pakistan to visit Karachi with a ring for the bride.

Malik was invited to attend a conference in Islamabad on October 27 and had planned to get engaged during the trip, sources revealed. But he was arrested—as part of the Government’s crackdown on separatists—four days before he could make the trip. Malik spent his engagement day at the Sumbal Police Station.

It was on one of his trips to Pakistan that Malik met Mashal. Her father, a senior defence personnel in Pakistan, died a few years ago and her brother, a security affairs expert, teaches in a US university.

Sources say Malik plans to marry in January but that depends on whether he will be released and whether the government will allow him to travel to Pakistan to bring his bride home.

The 39-year-old Malik is one of the first five JKLF commanders who launched a militant movement in Kashmir in 1989. He later came under attack from militants when he declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1994 and turned the JKLF into a political party. At one point of time, Malik had decided he wouldn’t tie the knot because of the risks involved in politics.