NEW DELHI: Security agencies are confident that the additional security measures implemented after Rahul Bhat’s murder in May will keep them safe, despite the fact that they view the terror ‘hit-list’ targeting Kashmiri Pandits employed in the Valley as part of the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation Package as a ‘generic threat’ intended to sow fear and panic among the community’s members.
Kashmiri Pandits deployed in remote areas were transferred to district/tehsil headquarters for improved safety as part of the security stepped up in May. A top J&K government employee stated that Kashmiri Pandits living in the Valley now live in clusters that are well secured.
To examine the security situation in J&K, J&K police, central paramilitary, and intelligence brass met on Tuesday in North Block under the chairmanship of home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla. It is suspected that the conversations included the threat made against 56 Kashmiri Pandits working in the Valley via the Telegram blog ‘Kashmir Fight,’ which is connected to the Lashkar-e-Taiba affiliate The Resistance Front (TRF). Meanwhile, J&K police detectives are attempting to figure out how TRF, which is currently run by ‘most-wanted’ terrorist Sajjad Gul and is based in PoK, could have gained access to the list of Kashmiri Pandit instructors.
According to information obtained by TOI, the ‘hit-list’ is a nearly exact facsimile of a J&K government directive about the transfer of teachers hired under the PM’s package that was issued in May 2022 and copies of which were sent to several recipients. It’s intriguing that just 56 of the individuals on the hit list are Kashmiri Pandits; six of them are really Muslims. There are also some inconsistencies in the locations where the mentioned personnel were posted. An officer stated that there is a ‘suspicion’ that the list was released by an insider and added that attempts are being made to determine who leaked it.
Threats against Kashmiri Pandits or any other group, such as journalists, are taken very seriously, a J&K police officer told TOI, but ‘one must remember that such hit-lists are not new and regularly resorted to to keep up the sense of terror in the Valley’ and relate it to a ‘exodus’ from the Valley. Following the Valley’s schools’ mid-December holiday break, Kashmiri Pandits and others frequently move. This is not an infrequent occurrence. According to the officer, terrorists might portray this migration as a ‘exodus motivated by fear’ if a threat was previously issued.
Post Your Comments