New Delhi: Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is suspected to have been behind Sunday’s militant attack on a pilgrim bus in Jammu’s Reasi district, with its offshoot The Resistance Front (TRF) claiming responsibility in social media posts.
The attack has so far left nine pilgrims dead and 33 injured. With screenshots of the news, the Jhelum Media House, the channel of the TRF, warned of further attacks on non-local people including tourists, calling the Reasi bus attack “the beginning of the renewed start”.
Sources in the security establishment however said that the TRF has been working on its propaganda module and takes credit for any such attacks that align with its declared objective of not allowing non-local people into Jammu and Kashmir.
“We have seen the post in the wake of the Reasi bus attack, but that alone does not amount to taking responsibility. They feast on any attack that resembles their objectives of creating fear and terror among non-locals, and Reasi could be just another such case,” a top police officer in Jammu told ThePrint.
Formed in 2019 in the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, the TRF was banned as a terrorist organisation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, in January last year.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), at the time, said that the TRF was running “psychological operations on social media platforms for inciting people of Jammu and Kashmir to join terrorist outfits against Indian state”.
Additionally, in a written reply in Parliament in March last year, the MHA said that the TRF has “been involved in planning of killings of security force personnel and innocent civilians of Jammu and Kashmir, co-ordinating and transporting weapons to support proscribed terrorist organisations, recruitment of terrorists, infiltration of terrorists and smuggling of weapons and narcotics from across the border”.
Police have earlier linked the TRF to the killing of a Kashmiri pandit and non-local labourers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
After Sunday’s attack, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha announced an ex-gratia of Rs 10 lakh for the immediate kin of the dead pilgrims and compensation of Rs 50,000 for the injured pilgrims.
He also said that at the site of the attack, the security establishment had created temporary headquarters of security forces, including personnel from the Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Army and the Central Reserve Police Force.
Sources in the security establishment told ThePrint that while the Army has deployed quadcopters to increase the efficacy of the combing and search operations, the National Investigation Agency has also reached the site as part of protocol in the aftermath of any militant attack.
ThePrint earlier reported that a bus carrying nearly 50 pilgrims fell into a deep gorge near the Kanda area under the limits of the Pouni police station after the driver lost control in the wake of an attack by militants.
The bus was coming from Shivkhori temple in the Ransoo area of Reasi and headed towards Katra — the base camp of Mata Vaishno Devi temple — when militants laid an ambush and opened fire at the bus.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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