Ultras gun for soft targets to stock up arms

With the terror groups, operating in Jammu & Kashmir, facing shortage of fire arms in the wake of improved security grid in the hinterland and heightened vigil along the International Border and line of Control (loC), the jehadi outfits have devised a new strategy to increase their weapons stocks by hitting “soft” targets and snatching weapons from security personnel to replenish their stocks. 

The paramilitary forces deployed in internal security and counter-insurgency grid have alerted their formations in the State of the new terror tactic to take suitable measures to thwart such designs. State police has also taking proactive steps in joint operations with the Central security forces to check such incidents. 

The terror groups, especially the Hizbul Mujahideen has in the recent past been motivating gullible young recruits to snatch weapons from the sentry posts of the police and paramilitary formations or the security personnel deployed on the streets to get permanent roles in the ranks of the jehadi outfit. CRPF Director General Prakash Mishra has been on record saying the paramilitary is revisiting the strategy of deployment and patrolling in order to curb the incidents of weapon snatching by terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir. 

The terrorists had killed two CRPF personnel at Sangam in Anantnag district in May this year and decamped with the service weapons. likewise, On May 15, two terrorists attacked a security guard with a knife at the residence of Congress district president Zahoor Hussain at Char-i-Shareef area in Central Kashmir’s Budgam district. 

On May 13, the Jammu & Kashmir police in a joint operation with 42 Rashtriya Rifles busted Hizbul Mujahideen-Jaish-e-Mohammad module engaged in targeting security guards to snatch their weapons and arrested Suhial Majeed Bhat and Gulzar Ahmad Dar. State police and Rashtriya Rifles in a joint operation on June 13, nabbed a lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorist responsible for attack on policemen in the Shopian district. The arrested terrorist Umar Yaqoob alias Tiger of Shopian town was recruited recently by the leT.

Yaqoob was responsible for attacks on policemen and incidents of weapon snatching, and was planning to carry out similar attacks in Shopian and Pulwama districts, the police said after his arrest. The joint team of the police and the Rashtriya Rifles recovered a Chinese pistol with six rounds of ammunition from Yaqoob. 

The State has witnessed a surge in attacks on the security personnel in the last few months and security forces are likely to face more such misdemeanors in view of the onset of infiltration season from across the border or the loC. 

Terror groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizbul Mujahideen are under constant pressure from Pakistan’s notorious spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence to step up violence in the State that has recorded an improved security scenario in the last few years. The ISI seeks to create a disturbed security environment in the Valley by perpetrating violence through its affiliate organizations to further its anti-India propaganda at international fora, a senior security official said. 

The security forces have heightened their vigil in the State in the wake of such inputs especially in view of the ongoing Amarnath Yatra and the onset of the tourist season in the Valley. Apart from the bid by the ISI-backed terror groups’ bid to infiltrate in the State, a growing phenomenon of local youth joining terrorist ranks in the past few months is another matter of concern for the state administration and security forces.  local recruitment had seen a downward trend till 2013 but has picked up again with more than 100 highly-educated young men picking up the gun. 

Reports indicated that about two dozen youth from Sopore and Baramulla had joined militant ranks in the last few weeks and officials said the recent incidents of weapon snatching from security personnel was carried out by these youths. Not highly-trained like their fellow militants who infiltrate from across the lOC, these local youths were also behind the killing of three unarmed policemen recently. Security forces had managed to neutralise nearly 30 such recruits in November and December last year but the numbers had again swelled.