It was noticed that around the time of Amarnath Yatra last month, the intensity of violence slowly started coming down. There has been a significant lowering of the level of violence. Random grenade attacks and several low-key attacks though get reported here and there.
Anti-terrorist operations have gone up showing the determination of the Government, Army and the Security Forces. All this has been making the terrorist groups and their supporters the Separatist Hurriyat Quite restless. One of the terrorist groups Umar Majid group, which has suffered a lot recently, has got quite desperate. They are the ones who are now issuing threats to locals of J& K in the Army, the Security Forces and the State Police.
A day after an Army jawan was shot dead by Hizbul Mujahideen, the terror group has threatened security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir to either resign or get ready to be killed. The threat came through a video in which a man, possibly a local commander, can be heard speaking in Kashmiri language. As a collage of images of Jammu and Kashmir police plays, the voice asks the personnel – Central Armed Police Forces or local police — to submit their resignations within four days.
“Upload your resignations on the internet or face the consequences,” the local head of Umar Majeed group, an offshoot of Hizbul Mujahideen, is heard saying.
Police officials say that posters carrying threats have also come up in many villages. “The threat issued through small videos and posters doesn’t appear to be very serious, but definitely has potential to cause serious concerns,” said a senior Home Ministry official.
According to the official, these videos have gone viral in the last 12 hours and terrorists themselves are now worried about the repercussions.
Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbagh Singh, who refused to comment on the threat, said they are taking required steps.
A territorial Army soldier, who had returned home in south Kashmir’s Kulgam for his son’s funeral, was killed by terrorists on Monday. The gunmen barged into his home in Shurat village and shot him. Officials say Lance Naik Mukhtar Ahmad Malik was a commander of a disbanded counter-insurgency group before he was recruited in the territorial Army.
He was the latest off-duty soldier to be killed by terrorists in Kashmir. In the last one year, several off-duty personnel have been killed in their homes in south Kashmir, a region heavily infested by terrorism.
The police say that they have identified his killers and efforts are on to nab them.
As many as 190 incidents of violence have been reported in the last three months. At least 65 of them were reported in August in which 14 security personnel and 28 terrorists were killed.
Thirty three security officials, 63 terrorists and 16 civilians have been killed since June.
“The entire counter-insurgency grid in Jammu and Kashmir is run with help of security personnel. Most of them are locals. Terrorists are trying to push the police to a corner. We are acting on it, but as of now threats are more on social media than on ground,” said a senior official involved in counter-insurgency operations.
Now Pakistan and terrorist leadership must have become aware that the J& K Police with the backing of the Indian Army will go all out and remove terrorism from its root. Bases in Pakistan if required will be wiped out too.
