New Delhi: Banned terror outfit The Resistance Front (TRF) has issued a warning against the ongoing ‘anti-encroachment’ drive in Jammu and Kashmir, threatening to “kill anyone working for the revenue department or whose machines are used” for demolitions.
Following the threat from TRF, which is an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, security around the sites where demolitions are being carried out has been stepped up, sources told ThePrint.
“The police teams are accompanying revenue officials during these drives. There is appropriate security that has been deployed on these sites,” the source said.
According to the letter issued Saturday, which was put out by a portal called ‘Kashmir Fight’, a copy of which is with ThePrint, the TRF threatened to everyone from a “peon to clerk to patwari, Naib Tehsildar or Tehsildar or District Commissioner, whether involved or not”. It said that its cadres would kill anyone “who’s either the owner or driver of these bulldozers or JCBs”.
The terror group also said that properties of its supporters were destroyed and that the officials were watching as “mute spectators” and that is why the TRF will avenge it.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration claims to have retrieved 15 lakh kanal, or 1.87 lakh acre, of state and ‘ghacharai (grazing)’ land across the Union Territory after an anti-encroachment drive was launched in early January. Several senior political leaders have faced action in the drive which has led to protests both in the provinces of Jammu and Kashmir.
On Saturday, the administration bulldozed a one-storey building at Lewar village in Pahalgam that belonged to Hizbul Mujahideen’s commander Amir Khan.
In a first such action, the house of a designated Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist, Ashiq Nengroo, allegedly involved in the Pulwama terror attack of 2019 was demolished in December last year, for being constructed on “encroached government land”. A source in the intelligence told ThePrint that the house was made out of “proceeds of crime”, constructed with “terror money”.
Nengroo, who faces several cases of the Arms Act, has been termed as a “threat to the security of India”. In April last year, the Ministry of Home Affairs designated him a terrorist under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
In the letter, the terror group also provoked the general public to “burn down the houses of all those perpetrators (government officials) along with people from the revenue department if they are living in their neighbourhoods”.
“We will be at your back to take responsibility for these acts. If we are not around your area, the general public can do it themselves and the guys doing it will be welcomed in Resistance Fighters Ranks,” the TRF said.
The letter also said that properties of these government employees, too, will be a target. “These traitors won’t be allowed to sleep,” the terror outfit said, adding that it has already “given a go-ahead for eliminating traitors”.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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