It was seen that between period 1992 to 2002 in South Kashmir alone, around 500 armed terrorists were killed every year. However nowadays with more accurate intelligence inputs on the movement of terrorists in the comparatively more peaceful state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has brought down the average active life of a terrorist drastically.
The active life of a terrorist is considered to be the time period between his coming in from Pakistan or POK and joining one of the terrorist groups operating inside the state of Jammu & Kashmir and his being hunted down or being captured. The period used to be 12 months on an average earlier.
“The active life of a terrorist has come down as we have been getting pinpointed information about the movement of the terrorists and more so about the top leaders of the terrorist groups,” said a State security official.
Such success in operations has led to the highest number of terrorist eliminations in eight years. Six were killed in an operation on 21 December taking the total this year to 262,out of which 15 were killed on the LOC itself.. In 2010 around 232 terrorists had been hunted down in similar manner.
Of the 262 killed this year, 247 have been killed in the hinterland while 15 were eliminated while trying to infiltrate into the country along the Line of Control (LoC).
Both the Army and Central Security forces have also paid a heavy cost. Even the State Police has lost many policemen.So far, 61 have been killed in incidents of cross-border firing, sniping and shelling. The latest incident took place on 22 December when two Junior Commissioned Officers were killed in cross-border sniping in Kupwara.
Data shows a total of 1,563 ceasefire violations took place along the LoC this year. These include incidents of firing from small arms, snipers and mortar and grenade attacks. The number of youngsters in the state being made to join terrorism forcibly has also increased from 128 last year to 191 this year according to a police official. Also as per the Army there were 302 infiltration attempts from the Pakistan side this year, most of them unsuccessful.
