A crowd seething at the recent killings of four policemen by militants in longtime “peace abode” Kathua, part of the saffron bastion in Jammu, confronted visiting BJP leaders on Friday to pour scorn on the Centre’s claims of normalcy.
“Is there any place in Kathua (a district in Jammu) that has not witnessed deaths?” a protester, who claimed the death of a relative in militant firing, asked former Jammu and Kashmir BJP chief Ravinder Raina outside a Kathua hospital.
“We lost five jawans in Lohai Malhar. There were killings in Hiranagar. Two men were abducted and killed in Billawar. How many more will have to die?”
Raina was at the hospital to visit policemen injured in Thursday’s gunfight in Sofiyan that left four jawans dead. There’s no clarity on the militant casualties.
The Jammu region has been shaken by militant violence since the scrapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in August 2019, a measure the Centre claims has helped crush the insurgency. Kathua, once among the most peaceful parts of the region, has borne the brunt in recent months.
Anger has been brewing in Kathua, Jammu City, Samba and Udhampur, which represent the Dogra heartland of the Jammu region, a BJP stronghold.
Raina was gheraoed by a mob on Friday that asked why Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah had not reacted to the latest killings.
A protester said the public had been told after the February 2019 Pulwama bombing that no more attacks would happen, but this had proved false. He wondered why the Centre was not acting against Pakistan after all thisbloodshed.
“You only issue statements; this is a security lapse,” he told Raina.
After the gun battle, the forces had struggled to retrieve the bodies of their fallen comrades amid unrelenting fire from the militants. Three bodies were recovered on Thursday night and the fourth on Friday. Chief minister Omar Abdullah attended their funeral on Saturday.
Director-general of police (DGP) Nalin Prabhat had on Friday night said the militants were the same group that had earlier engaged the forces for four days in Sanyal village of Kathua (without casualties).
Reports on Thursday morning had said the militants had reached Sofiyan village, 60km away, he added.
“Our jawans were scaling (the mountain). They (militants) took advantage of their (advantageous) position and our men were in their clear line of sight,” he said.
Asked repeatedly how many militants had been killed, Prabhat was evasive, saying the forces’ focus had been on retrieving the slain jawans’ bodies.
Omar wrote on X: “Visited the families of our bravehearts — Balvinder Singh, Tariq Ahmad, Jaswant Singh, and Jagbir Singh, who laid down their lives in the line of duty during theKathua encounter.
“Their sacrifice is etched in our hearts forever. We stand with their families in this hour of grief.”
The BJP is under pressure from some of its political rivals to act against Pakistan over the continuingmilitant violence.
“I want the country’s Prime Minister, home minister, LG (lieutenant governor) Sahab and the DGP to deal sternly (with militancy). The time has come for a fitting reply to the enemy country,” Satish Sharma, an independent MLA from Jammu who is part of the Omargovernment, said.
