Once a peaceful village, Rajouri’s Dhangri tries to come to terms with twin terror attacks

Upper and lower Dhangri, according to senior police officers, have nine village defence committees -- armed security groups were first set up in J&K areas with Hindu population during the militancy peak

Dhangri, a Hindu-dominated village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri, is trying to come to terms with the reign of terror that unleashed on it on Sunday evening.

The village, which has a population of nearly 5,000 people including at least 1,500 Muslims, had last seen a mayhem of similar magnitude in 1999, when armed terrorists attacked a marriage party and killed eight members of Hindu community in nearby Bal Jarala. (Shanky Rathore)

The village, which has a population of nearly 5,000 people including at least 1,500 Muslims, had last seen a mayhem of similar magnitude in 1999, when armed terrorists attacked a marriage party and killed eight members of Hindu community in nearby Bal Jarala.

Upper and lower Dhangri, according to senior police officers, have nine village defence committees (VDCs). These armed security groups were first set up in J&K areas with Hindu population during the militancy peak. The officers said the local VDCs are equipped with 71 conventional 303 rifles, a claim strongly contested by villagers.

“Dhangri has largely remained a peaceful area. Even today, the village has nine VDCs with 71 weapons and adequate ammunition at their disposal. Their members had recently undergone training with the army, but were probably unaware and complacent at the time of recent attacks. Only one VDC member had opened fire on Sunday,” claimed a senior police officer, who insisted on remaining anonymous.

The Rajouri district, where militancy has seen a revival in the past couple of years, has at least 5,200 VDCs currently.

Why did village come under attack

Dhangri sarpanch Dheeraj Kumar Sharma said, “The motive of the attackers was to execute targeted killings, create communal disturbance and trigger migration of Hindus from the Pir Panjal ranges on the lines of what they did with Kashmiri Pandits in 1990.”

“Their aim was to create fear. Hadn’t our VDC member Balkrishan opened fire, they would have killed more villagers,” he added.

He also backed the reports claiming that the victims were identified after checking their Aadhaar cards. “Aadhaar cards were seen lying near the bodies,” Sharma said.

On the village’s security apparatus, he said, “Ninety rifles out of the 150 weapons were taken back from us in the last two years by the administration following a government circular and no new weapons were issued, while militancy kept rearing its ugly head in Rajouri.”

“The area under Dhangri is vast and the population is scattered. Had we opened fire and engaged the terrorists on Sunday evening, who would have taken the six injured to the hospital? The cops, who should have reached the village within 10 minutes, arrived one hour and 40 minutes after the shootout,” Sharma claimed.

Steps taken to buttress its security

“Now, the villagers have sought deployment of army and quick reaction teams in areas inhabited by minorities in the region. Lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha has assured us that VDCs in Dhangri will be provided self-loading rifles instead of 303 rifles within seven days,” the sarpanch said. The village, which is about 144km from Jammu city, has nearly 200 ex-servicemen. Considering the population, Sharma said, they needed 500 guns.

“Militancy is on the rise in Rajouri, but the administration is not doing enough,” said an elderly villager, who wished not to be named. He claimed that there was an army division in Dhangri, which was shifted to Ladakh following tensions on the LAC in 2020.

According to security forces’ assessment, two suspected terrorists allegedly owing allegiance to Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) carried out the selective killings in Dhangri and had also opened fire outside an army’s camp in Rajouri on December 16, leaving two civilians dead and one injured. The camp’s Alpha gate is barely 5km across a river from Dhangri.

A senior army officer in the know of current situation said, “The two men believed to be part of JeM might have freshly infiltrated into Rajouri. There was a search operation in Muradpur (in Rajouri) recently, where success eluded security forces. In the December 16 incident outside the army camp, we had recovered Chinese cartridges.”

As per intelligence inputs, JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were planning to target civilians in the two districts of Rajouri and Poonch.

For now, security has been beefed up in Dhangri with deployment of armoured vehicles and at least 2,000 men from the army, police and CRPF.