Army to hunt down ultra wing leaders to curb terrorism

In the wake of rising number of terror incidents in Jammu and Kashmir, the Army has decided to launch a major offensive against the top brass of militant outfits to curb their activities.

Sources told Deccan Herald that the Army high command has issued direction to the field commanders to hunt down the leaders of different militant outfits to reduce incidents of violence in the Valley. “It has also asked the field commanders to launch an offensive against the militant handlers and those who are financing terror activities,” they said.

The Army maintains that around 300 militants are active in the state and it has devised a strategy to identify the top commanders of the terror outfits and their groups within the organisations and target them directly to ensure their killing, sources added.

Sources said the high command has also asked field commanders on the Line of Control (LoC) to maintain best possible surveillance in the coming months as intelligence inputs have pointed out that the militants would go all out to sneak-in into the state and settle themselves well before the announcement of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections next year.

“Though the Army was already on high alert on the LoC in view of increased activity across the border and infiltration attempts, the Commanders have been asked to further step-up the anti-infiltration measures,” they added.

A senior police officer said that at the moment, indigenous militant outfit Hizb-ul-Muajhideen was giving tough time to the security forces. “In the recent years, security forces and police have been successful in eliminating the top leadership of Lashker-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfits. This has dented the morale of the cadres of these two terror organisations and at the moment they are on a run,” he said.

“However, Hizb-ul-Muajhideen has silently regrouped all these years and at the moment, they have the best striking capability among all the active terror organisations in the Valley. Major attacks this year in which more than two dozen security personnel were killed were carried by Hizb,” he added. 

The officer corroborated that in the coming days, they would go after the leaders of terror organisations, especially Hizb. “We believe that leaderless group and the outfit wouldn’t be in a position to carry out tasks or operations unless more commanders were inducted into their ranks from across the LoC.

Most of the outfits or groups within the terror organisations, whose leaders had been killed by security forces, remained in wilderness for a long period till the new leadership took over and issued them directions on the tasks they had to carry out,” he said.