‘Pakistan groups trying to send 200 terrorists’

Around 160 terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) are ready to infiltrate into the Valley, according to intelligence inputs available to national security planners.

Updated on: May 5, 2020, 05:28:27 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Pakistan-based groups have activated their launch pads along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and the International Border (IB) in Jammu in an attempt to send across more than 200 terrorists at a time when the Indian security forces are busy helping the region’s civil administration to fight the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak, according officials familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Around 160 terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) are ready to infiltrate into the Valley, according to intelligence inputs available to national security planners. In the Jammu sector, along the border, around 70 armed and trained terrorists are planning to sneak into the Indian territory through unfenced nullahs, the inputs added. Counter-terror operatives said Jaish terrorists were camping at Samani-Bhimber and Dhudhnial launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. LeT has been sending its terrorists to the Leepa and Kel launching pads in Leepa Valley and Neelum Valley, respectively.

Indian security agency officials said that, as part of its plan to intensify infiltration efforts and terror attacks in J&K, the Jaish has been mobilising its cadre across the IB in the Sialkot sector since February. Intelligence inputs also reveal that a group of armed Jaish terrorists arrived in Mundeke village, Daska Tehsil, in Sialkot district on February 11, 2020. There were 133 successful infiltration events along the LoC/IB in 2019 with majority of the crossovers taking place between April and September 2019, according to home ministry official. During January-February 2020, the Indian security forces managed to arrest 48 jihadists and overground workers of terror groups, and neutralised 24 terrorists, including three foreign nationals.

The April 5 encounter in the Keran sector, in which five terrorists were killed in a close-quarters battle, revealed that the LeT had big plans to infiltrate from the Kupwara sector, according to investigators. Five elite Indian commandos also died in the operation.

The LOC/IB infiltration takes place in different sectors: Gurez, Machchil, Keran, Tangdhar, Naugam and Uri in Kashmir; Poonch, Krishnaghati, Bhimber Gali, Sunderbani and Naushera in the Rajouri sector; and Jourian, Hira Nagar, Kathua, Samba and Jammu in the Jammu sector.

While the main outfits involved in the infiltration are Jaish, Lashkar and Hizbul, there are indications, security official said, that the Rawalpindi GHQ wants to revive the Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (Huji) in Sialkot, Punjab and Kotli regions of PoK.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
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.Read More

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