Opinion Terror at Rajouri

The killings in Rajouri are one more saddening reminder that terrorism is still part of the landscape of Jammu and Kashmir. Six unarmed people, including two children, were killed in two incidents in the same village. Rajouri is known to be a transit path for cross-border terrorists, who use the mountainous route to access south Kashmir. While infiltration is reported to have been at its lowest last year since 2017, it has not ended. Through all of 2022, there have been numerous reports of the Army foiling infiltration attempts through the Line of Control, but it cannot stop all such incidents. It has not yet been established if the killers in this case — witnesses have said there were two — came from across the border or were home grown. But it is worrying that terrorists managed to access easily an area saturated with troops, Border Security Force, Rashtriya Rifles, and the police, where local residents are closely connected to the military, with large numbers contractually employed in the Army who are quick to flag suspicious activity. Indeed, residents did report the presence of “suspicious persons” in early December, and the Army had conducted searches. The tension building up in the area was evident as far back as December 16, from the stand-off between residents and the Army in the Muradpur area of Rajouri when two civilians who worked inside the local Army camp were shot dead at the gates. Then, the Army said that there would be an investigation to get to the bottom of the incident. It is not known what the investigation concluded, and if the searches continued after that.

The suspected prolonged presence of the terrorists who struck Dangri, if proved correct, provokes comparisons with the October 2021 stand-off in Poonch, the district neighbouring Rajouri. Here, a group of terrorists who had been holed up in the upper reaches of the hilly area engaged with Army parties for over a month. The Army lost 10 soldiers in that period, the terrorists were not traced. In the latest incident too, eyewitness descriptions of the two men from the survivors have not yet led the police any closer to finding them. In 2021, troops discovered in time an IED intended to cause maximum damage. In Dangri, it remained undetected, and caused two of the six deaths, 12 hours after four people died in the shooting.

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The J&K police’s proposal to rearm villagers to protect themselves seems to be a knee-jerk response to anger at the authorities for failing to prevent the incident. Village Defence Committees were effective in the Chenab region in the 1990s. But from past experience of VDCs, their utility, especially in communally sensitive areas, is questionable. The protection of citizens is the duty of the state, and outsourcing this task is fraught with all kinds of perils.