Affiliated with the progressive Pakistan Peoples Party, this diplomat and government administrator served as Interior Minister of Pakistan from 2008-2013. Earlier in his career, he had held the position of Director of the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency.
Following his 1973 Statistics Department graduation from Karachi University, he worked for a time for the Pakistani National Alien Registration Authority before becoming a special agent with the FIA (Federal Investigation Agency).
For nearly a decade, as a result of political turbulence in Pakistan, he lived in exile in the United Kingdom.
He was born to a Muslim family in the northeastern Pakistani province of Punjab.
In the mid-1990s, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif forced Malik out of the FIA, likely because Malik had exposed the political corruption of Sharif and his associates.