The separatist leader had then been detained as a preventive measure by the authorities in Jammu and Kashmir [Images] to ensure that he would not carry his poll-boycott call. Malik had sent his friends to Pakistan with a ring for the bride.

Malik, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front is now in Pakistan to solemnise his nikah.

"I am going on a 10-day personal visit to Pakistan. I will solemnize my nikah in an austere way according to the Islamic tenets," Malik said ahead of his visit. Malik is believed to have met Mushaal during one of his visits to Pakistan.

Malik's family plans to cross the border in a bus on the Srinagar [Images]-Muzaffarabad road to attend the marriage. However, the bride is expected to move to Jammu and Kashmir only when her family visits Srinagar in the summer.

Mushaal is the daughter of the late Pakistani economist M A Hussain Malik and Rehana Mullick, a former secretary general of the women's wing of the Pakistan Muslim League.

Her bother Haider Ali Hussein Mullick is a foreign policy analyst in Washington focusing on South Asia.

Malik's choice of marrying an outsider had tongues agging in Srinagar but JKLF leaders silenced critics by caiming a Kashmiri connection. "The girl's family has roots in Kashmir," one of Malik's friends told the media.

The JKLF chief will be the third separatist leader in the state to marry an outsider, though there is a Kashmiri connection to each.

Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq is married Sheeba, an American of Kashmiri origin. People's Conference chief Sajjad Lone's wife Asma is the daughter of JKLF leader Amanullah Khan from the Pakistani part of Kashmir.