No safe haven for terrorists in J&K anymore: LG Manoj Sinha

The people of Jammu and Kashmir know fully well who shielded such terror elements, but that shield is now crumbling, he said. “I warn them that there is no longer any safe haven in Jammu and Kashmir for terrorists or the networks that support them,” he said.

Paying tribute to victims of terrorism, the Lieutenant Governor reiterated his commitment to ensure every terror victim’s family receives the justice, jobs, recognition and support they deserve after years of suffering.

“Terror victim families remained erased from society’s memory for decades,” he said, adding that the most painful truth is that these families were let down by the very system whose duty and primary obligation was to protect them.

“I do not see this merely as an administrative lapse, but a civilisational failure of that time,” Sinha said.

“The elders of the society must ask themselves some tough questions — what kind of society we had become a few decades ago? How did Jammu and Kashmir evolve into a system where the victim became a burden at that time and those linked to terror were turned into beneficiaries?” he said.

“I’m confident that these questions will shake our conscience, because such practices hollow out every value that makes a society just. Such darkness had extinguished the very spirit of law, trust, and coexistence,” he said.

The Lieutenant Governor said those who were part of the terror ecosystem and infiltrated government machinery in the past will face the law, be removed from government jobs and punished as per law.

“Those directly linked to terrorism are being dismissed from service, while decades-long neglected terror victim families are being given government jobs to secure their economic and social dignity. I see this not merely as a policy correction, but as a new moral declaration for a new Jammu and Kashmir.

This is a clear message that a new order has arrived, one that will punish mercilessly those tied to terrorism and will firmly fulfil its duties to restore the dignity of victims,” he said. “This moral declaration is the announcement of a system that defines justice not only in words, but in deeds,” the Lieutenant Governor added.

Appointment letters were also handed over to 29 next of kin of government employees who died in service, and to beneficiaries in age relaxation cases under the Jammu and Kashmir Rehabilitation Assistance Scheme-2022 and SRO 43.