Hundreds of suspected terrorists have been arrested in Jammu and Kashmir over the past week in a major crackdown to bring an end to violence in the Kashmir Valley. This comes after several incidents of attacks targetting minorities in the area, including members of the Hindu and Sikh community. The exact number of those detained remains unclear but news reports have been quoting numbers ranging from 430 to 900.
According to a senior police officer quoted by NDTV, the individuals have been detained to “break the chain of attacks in the [Kashmir] valley.” He said that the individuals were identifying and attacking “easy targets.”
Sources say that the rise in attacks in the Valley is a consequence of the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan, which has been supporting radicalism in the region. Authorities believe that the attacks were orchestrated by The Resistance Front, an arm of terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Some have even been said to be associated with the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). The detained individuals have been described as “hybrid” terrorists who have been duped by leaders of the organisation on the promise of drugs and money.
According to News18, those detained are over-ground workers who are providing on-ground support to LeT, JeM, and Al Badar. They work as informants that provide logistical support to the militant groups
Two significant individuals killed in recent attacks include Supunder Kour and Deepak Chand, both government school teachers who were attacked by a gunman in Srinagar on Thursday. According to Reuters, the gunmen confirmed the identity of the teachers, who were both members of minority communities in Kashmir. The list of the victims of the recent attacks indicates that the violent activities are disproportionately targeted towards the Hindu and Sikh minority communities, which has raised fears about the rise of communal violence in the region.
Following the attacks, authorities in the Kashmir Valley conducted several raids and arrested the individuals from Srinagar, Anantnag, Kulgam, and Shopian, amongst others. According to a report in the Times of India, one of the arrested individuals was a “prominent drugs supplier” from Srinagar.
Apart from those detained, 40 others have also been summoned for questioning by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Moreover, the agency also arrested two individuals in relation to the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) found in Jammu in June. The spokesperson of the NIA said that the investigations indicated that the two had been conspiring to participate in “extensive terror activities for harming the general public.”
The Kashmir Valley region was especially volatile in the 1990s, when tens of thousands of people, mainly minorities, were forced to escape from the region and seek refuge in other parts of Jammu and Kashmir and indeed other parts of the country. However, the recent attacks show a rise in targeted killings, which indicates a resurgence of communal violence, bringing back memories of the 1990s exodus of Kashmiri Hindus. These troubling incidents are expected to be met with a rise in surveillance, raids, detentions, and investigations by the central and regional authorities, who have been concerned about the rising attacks on minorities in the region.