Mission Militants

Fayaz Bukhari

In the last six months, there has been no lockdown on militancy in Kashmir. That is why the security forces have had to intensify their operations in the valley and have successfully killed 113 militants in the first six months of the year. Not only this, they have framed a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to tackle militancy effectively.

IG police Kashmir Range Vijay Kumar

The new SOP brought into force in March aims to prevent publicity to militants by not disclosing their identity and outfit to which they belong, not allowing any public funerals for them, cracking down on social media accounts of militants and actively pursuing militants in the valley.

Since the new SOP came into force, which was after the nationwide lockdown was imposed, security officers have killed more than 83 militants. After the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution last year, anti-militancy operations were almost stopped. Only 19 militants were killed after August 2019.

The anti-militancy operations received fresh impetus after Vijay Kumar took over as Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir range. “My main focus was to enhance generation of human intelligence, speeding up of technical intelligence and to increase police-public interaction. All officers of district police were energised and motivated to the optimum level,” he said.

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Kumar said that developing healthy competition within police and among security forces was the game changer that led to major success against militants in Kashmir this year. The IGP said that so far 113 militants have been killed, more than 150 weapons recovered, a dozen militant hideouts busted and more than one