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Shah to take firm steps against targeted killings in Kashmir

It is understood that concrete directions to both civil and police administration will be given by home minister Amit Shah during an overall review of Jammu and Kashmir tomorrow afternoon. The meetings will be attended among others by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, UT Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, top intelligence chiefs, UT Chief Secretary and DGP.

Published on: Jun 2, 2022, 15:46:30 IST
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The Narendra Modi government is expected to take firm steps in Jammu and Kashmir to ensure that the minority community is more secure in the union territory and not targeted by Pakistan based terrorist groups.

Union home minister Amit Shah, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.
Union home minister Amit Shah, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

It is understood that concrete directions to both civil and police administration will be given by home minister Amit Shah during an overall review of Jammu and Kashmir tomorrow afternoon. The meetings will be attended among others by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, UT Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, top intelligence chiefs, UT Chief Secretary and DGP.

While the J&K Police believes that the targeted killing of minority community including bank manager Vijay Kumar at Kulgam has been orchestrated by Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), but security agencies believe that it is module of Pak based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) which is behind the cold-blooded murders.

Although the JKP police is trying to hunt down the killers of both Kumar and schoolteacher Rajni Bala, who was gunned down by terrorists in Kulgam two days earlier, the focus of home minister’s meeting will be on how to secure the minority community by not posting them beyond 30 kilometers from the headquarters so that they are not targeted by jihadists.

It is quite evident that the recent targeted killings in J&K is part of a larger plan by the jihadists to ensure that minority community stays out of the UT as also put the Modi government under pressure. Known to operate in the UT under instruction of Pakistani deep state, the jihadists clearly are out to overturn the peace dividend from revocation of article 370 and 35 A from Jammu and Kashmir.

While Home Minister Amit Shah is expected to ask civil administration to be more conscious to the security of minority community in the UT, the JKP will be asked firmly to get the local thana SHOs involved in the security of the UT. National Security planners feel that the eradication of terrorism from Punjab in the 1980-90s was only possible due to involvement of the local thana in counter-terror operations as well as in securing the community under one roof.

At the review meeting tomorrow, the Home Minister could also spell out new steps to ensure that the civilian administration was more responsive as well as more discreet so that innocents are not identified and then singled out and targeted.

  • Shishir Gupta
    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