NEW DELHI: In the wake of the targeted killings of civilians in Jammu and Kashmir, the Union Home Ministry will hold a high-level meeting on June 3 to devise countermeasures to neutralise this trend after taking stock of the security situation in the Union Territory.
The meeting at North Block, to be chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, will be attended by J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Intelligence Bureau Director Arvind Kumar, Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla, MHA Special Secretary (Internal Security) V S K Kaumudi and other senior officials of the Kashmir division.
Ahead of the June 3 meeting, Doval met Shah separately at North Block on Thursday for an urgent discussion in the backdrop of the killings. Minister of State at the PMO Dr Jitendra Singh also attended the meeting.
Home ministry sources said that while “some” intelligence inputs indicate that the targeted killings are a new modus operandi adopted by residual elements of the terrorist networks in J&K, the meeting will draw the broad contours of the security forces’ response to this emergent threat.
The killing of a bank manager in Kulgam on Thursday hastened the decision to convene the meeting, officials said, even as the senior echelons of the national security bureaucracy will examine the gaps and shortcomings, if any, in the “security grid”. The victim, identified as Vijay Kumar, who originally hailed from the Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan was the manager of Elaqahi Dehati Bank at Areh in Kulgam.
Kumar was the second victim of yet-to-be-identified assailants. On May 31, a gun-wielding man shot and killed Rajani Bala, at Gopalpora in Kulgam. Earlier, there were two major incidents in the Shopian district in the valley. Recently, three soldiers were killed when an explosion blew up the vehicle in which they were travelling.
Protests erupted in J&K last month when Kashmiri Pandits took to the streets after Rahul Bhat, who belonged to the same community, was shot in a magistrate’s office in Budgam. Targeted attacks on migrant labourers and Kashmiri Pandits started last year. In October 2021, seven civilians, including a Kashmiri Pandit, a Sikh and two non-local Hindus, were killed in five days. This led about 4,000 Kashmiri Pandits to threaten mass out-migration.
One of the responses likely to be adopted at Friday’s meeting is the deployment of ELINT (electronic intelligence) assets and heightened vigil by security men, including the army and the police, in districts where terror cells are suspected to operate.
The MHA, sources said, will not immediately take any strong measures that might turn the valley volatile, but will adopt tactics more suited to identifying – and whenever possible – taking “hard action” against the assailants operating individually or as part of a larger group.
The sources said that any strategy to counter the targeted killings will take into consideration the specific direction and methods that the NSA will bring to the table on June 3.