Killed Jaish terrorists had plans to disrupt PM Modi’s Jammu visit
Intelligence inputs indicate that Pakistan Army conducted searches of Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur in Punjab on Friday evening after the gunning down of two Jaish suicide attackers in Sunjwan in Jammu by Indian security forces.
Investigations into gunning down of two Jaish-e-Mohammed attackers by security forces in Sunjwan in Jammu have revealed that the terrorists wearing suicide vests had plans for mass casualties with the objective of disrupting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Jammu and Kashmir today.
The search party was fired upon by Jaish terrorists hiding inside a house, triggering a fierce gunfight.
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Interrogation of Bilal Ahmed Wage of Pulwama, the accomplice who picked up the two terrorists from Sapwal border in the Samba sector, and the guide, Shafiq Ahmed Sheikh of Avantipora, last Wednesday night revealed that Jaish attackers had plans to blow up inside a camp of security forces and cause mass killings. The objective was to create a situation that would force PM Modi to cancel his Jammu visit.
The two suicide attackers were engaged by security forces on April 21 late evening and neutralized by the next morning on Friday. Today, two more Jaish terrorists have been neutralized in an encounter with security forces in Kulgam in South Kashmir.
Suicide vest of killed Jaish attacker at Sunjwan.
While the Jammu and Kashmir Police and security agencies are further investigating the linkages of the terrorists killed in the Sunjwan encounter, there are intelligence inputs to indicate that the Pakistan Army surrounded the Bahawalpur Headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed and asked the inmates to hand over weapons while simultaneously conducting searches in the main seminary. The details of the searches at Bahawalpur at best remain sketchy and further confirmation is awaited.
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Had the Sunjwan terrorists been successful in engaging the security forces in a terror strike with resultant mass casualties like the 2019 Pulwama strike, it would have not only caused embarrassment to the Modi government but also forced it to take retaliatory measures against the group in Pakistan. It would have also shown the new Shehbaz Sharif government in poor light and put bilateral relations in deep freeze again.
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Had the Sunjwan terrorists been successful in engaging the security forces in a terror strike with resultant mass casualties like the 2019 Pulwama strike, it would have not only caused embarrassment to the Modi government but also forced it to take retaliatory measures against the group in Pakistan. It would have also shown the new Shehbaz Sharif government in poor light and put bilateral relations in deep freeze again.
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However, Pakistan Army is not only facing problems on its eastern borders with terrorist groups like Jaish launching solo jihadist operations, it is also having to contend with a new offensive from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan on the western border with Afghanistan. After the Pakistan Army launched airstrikes against so-called TTP positions along the Durand Line, the Taliban rulers in Kabul along with Haqqani Network have come out in support of the TTP against Islamabad and have vowed revenge by taking down the border fencing.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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