Quit or get hit, terror group tells J&K telecos

Outfit threatens to target service providers

Amid telecommunication blockade in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, hitherto unknown militant outfit Lashkar-e-Islam on Friday has asked all cellular companies in the Valley to wind up their operations within one day “failing which they would be targeted.”

A local news agency KNS quoting statement of spokesperson of the terror outfit said, “From the last three weeks, the telecommunication companies were intimated through written letters that the senior commanders of jihadi organisations were killed due to mobile communication. When Indian government asked them (cellular companies) to terminate the SMS services as same benefits mujahideen, it took them less than half an hour. Today when for the sake of Islam we ask them to suspend their operations, why reluctance is being shown?”

The terror outfit also lashed out at Hurriyat leaders who condemned the killings of two people associated with telecommunication business in Sopore. “Stop playing politics over the blood of martyrs. We will not accept it. It will be better for Hurriyat to mind its own business and not interfere in our matters,” the KNS quoting Lashkar-e-Islam ‘field operation’ spokesman Gazi Abu Sariq, said.

Cellular companies operating in and around Sopore have shut operations since Tuesday after a BSNL franchise employee and a person on whose land a cellular tower had come up were killed in purported attacks by unidentified militants.

While police maintains Hizbul Mujahideen is behind the attacks, militants blame “intelligence agencies” for the attacks.

A senior police officer told Deccan Herald that Lashkar-e-Islam could be a front of either Hizbul or Lashkar-e-Toiba militant outfits. “There is no past record of Lashker-e-Islam. Militants in the past have also been using such tactics to save their skin from public outcry,” he added.

Meanwhile, reports said threat posters asking cellular operators to stop services have come up in some areas of south Kashmir also.

The series of threats started after police seized a communication device from a cellular tower in Sopore recently. The militants blamed the cellular companies for helping police seize the device and started threatening them to stop services.