The back-to-back targeted attacks on two cops and one migrant labourer in Kashmir indicate that militants are able to harness and act on information supplied by the sympathisers and motivators within the public to carry out "intelligence-based attacks.”
While this may not constitute a serious security setback, it is nonetheless a worrying sign.
Although officials are characterising the attacks as flash-in-the-pan incidents, sources in the security establishment who spoke to The Quint off the record said that the actions involving getting closer to the victims in broad daylight and then hitting them with the pistol shots suggest that the perpetrators are old-timers who may have bid away their time all the while and are now resurfacing and stepping up attacks ahead of the winter season.
However, in one of the three killings that took place over the past week, fresh allegations from the family members of the victim have surfaced who claim that it was the personnel from the Indian Army unit posted nearby that shot dead the Head Constable Ghulam Muhammad Dar on 31 October in Tangmarg village of North Kashmir.
“As soon as the fire rang, the Army vehicle roared away,” Dar’s daughter, who is an eyewitness to the episode, told the media on Saturday. “They were the ones who fired.”
This correspondent hasn't been able to independently verify these allegations. However, The Quint is in possession of a media release in which the militant group has claimed the attack on Dar and promised more action.
Possibilities of a Pre-Meditated Attack
Last week, militant group The Resistance Front (TRF), which police says is a front of Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed an attack on a J&K Police inspector near the Eidgah area of Srinagar.
J&K Police sources told The Quint that inspector Masroor Wani was playing a game of cricket inside the Eidgah ground in Srinagar at the time of the attack. "He had been there for 6 hours already. He was not in his uniform,” sources said. "There were thousands of people on the ground. Then the terrorist came out of nowhere and fired three rounds.”
Sources said that the gunman escaped through the lattice of small lanes and alleys, that are peculiar to downtown Srinagar, after having committed the attack. "The time between the action and escape of the terrorist was just 4 minutes. Some friends of Masroor did try to chase him but he fled. This kind of confidence required to come into the presence of so many people and then carry out the killing is something that terrorists develop over a period of time,” sources said, adding that it wasn’t likely that Wani’s killing was pre-planned. “It may have been an impromptu decision once terrorists got to know about his presence.”
The attacks came just two months after former DGP Dilbagh Singh, who relinquished his post just last week, said that the erstwhile state was towards the policy of "zero terrorism in J&K.”
The ex-DGP said that terrorism in J&K was at its lowest level. Last month, Ajay Kumar Yadav, Inspector General CRPF (Srinagar Sector) also said that there was no militancy in Srinagar.
Terrorising Villagers Suspected As Main Motive
The assassination bid on the Srinagar cop coincided with two more attacks resulting in the killing of the J&K Police’s Head constable in the North Kashmir village of Tangmarg, and one migrant labourer from Uttar Pradesh who was working on a brick kiln in Tumchi village in South Kashmir’s Pulwama.
Last week, The Quint visited the Kralpora village in Tangmarg in North Kashmir. At the house of Ghulam Muhammad Dar, the slain Head Constable, mourners were arriving in a trickle.
Dar, like Wani, was also not on duty during the time of the assault and was overseeing a small construction work at his newly built house next to paddy fields.
“He had gone to drop off the plumber at the nearby village on the motorbike,” his brother Mohammad Yousuf said. “As soon as he returned, the assailants shot him.”
Dar is survived by seven daughters, with the youngest being 6 years old and the eldest 25 years old. The villagers said they didn’t know who and why anyone would have wanted to kill him. “Their motive was to spread terror,” Shabir Ahmad, the deceased cop’s brother-in-law said. “Otherwise we can’t see any reason.”
Kralpora is a sparsely populated village on the top of an uphill road leading to the famous tourist resort of Tangmarg. The village is surrounded by rolling rice fields dotted with stacks of harvested paddy stubble. There are only residential quarters, and a vast expanse of empty fields stretching into the horizon. It is not a place where one would ideally expect assailants to prowl around and murder unsuspecting villagers.
“We suspect that someone who knew us very well, and knew this area very well must have been involved in this killing,” said Mohammad Ashraf Bhat, Dar’s cousin.
How Are Militants Able To Gather Precise Data?
This style of plotting is consistent with last week’s attack on the inspector in Srinagar, as well as with the killing of 38 year old Mukesh Kumar from Bhatpura village in Unnao district in UP was shot dead.
Kumar, a brick kiln worker, was running an errand when two assailants on a motorcycle pulled up and fired several rounds at him. He was shot in the head and the chest. He was declared dead on his arrival at the hospital. J&K Lt Governor Manoj Sinha called the attack "cowardly” and said those responsible will not go unpunished.
These attacks show that militant groups are able to leverage their networks to generate pin-pointed intelligence about their targets, despite the declining levels of overall militancy. Official data suggests that out of 46 militants killed this year, 37 are Pakistani infiltrators, against the nine local recruits.
This is the first time since the outbreak of militancy in 1989 that the local-to-foreign ratio is so skewed.
It is a significant metric that demonstrates how local participation in militancy has drastically declined.
A Hybrid Militancy Redux
Since 2021, Kashmir Valley has been grappling with what security forces call “hybrid terrorism”. Police say the new trend involves the use of young sympathisers who can be motivated to carry out attacks, particularly the targeted assassinations. And since these neophytes don’t have a prior record of militancy, this makes it easier for them to evade suspicion.
Over the past two years, the region has seen many high-profile such killings where victims are mostly members of police personnel or religious minorities. Earlier this year, militants shot dead Sanjay Sharma, a Kashmiri Hindu, in Achan village in Pulwama. Last year alone, Kashmir witnessed 29 such targeted attacks.
The Quint has individually covered most of these killings, and tracked the ebbs and flows of hybrid militancy.
On Mass Arrests
In response to the back-to-back attacks, security forces have stepped up arrests and raids across the Valley. This reporter spoke to many persons in areas like Pulwama where residents confirmed that their relatives and extended relatives were detained for questioning.
This is not the first time that security forces have launched a campaign of mass detentions of alleged Over Ground Workers (OGWs) in an effort to stymie further devastating attacks.
In October 2021 where militants shot dead almost 13 people as a wave of deadly attacks swept through the Valley, authorities in J&K had to detain a large number of people suspected to be part of what they refer to as the OCW network.
But this week, prominent J&K politicians raised a hue and cry over the detentions. Sajad Lone, a former Minister, who heads J&K People’s Conference party condemned what he termed as “macro-policing”, referring to the alleged arbitrariness of the arrests.
“In the name of OGWs, hundreds of people have been rounded up in the last 24 hours. These are people who may have had a past in militancy but are now law-abiding citizens for the last two decades,” Lone said, adding that such an exercise was only going to deepen the feelings of alienation and prevent Kashmiris from coming out of what he called a “vicious cycle of violence.”
Persistent Efforts To Disrupt Normalcy
Sources in the security establishment said recently that a fresh wave of violence may have been planned by militant groups to counter the emerging discourse about normalcy in the UT. “There have been repeated statements from senior officers and Lt Gov about peace and absence of violence,” a security source said. “And, a change in leadership, with the new Director General of Police J&K taking charge could be another factor.”
The official said that perpetrators in these attacks appear to be “well organised”, and have executed back-to-back intelligence-based attacks in all three police ranges of Central, South, and North.
"This indicates they receive orders from handlers across the border, when and where to strike,” sources said.
Meanwhile, police sources told The Quint that the injured inspector Masroor Wani appeared to have survived last week’s deadly attack. “He had a pretty bad first three days. But doctors are now telling us that his Glasgow Coma Scale (which determines the level of consciousness after injury) has improved and that he has been responding,” a senior official said. "But such patients are still considered very critical.”
(Shakir Mir is an independent journalist. He tweets at @shakirmir. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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