From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the Times of India podcast. At least nine people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was attacked by terrorists in the Ryasi district of Jammu on the 9th of June. The nine people were part of a larger group who were travelling in the bus when it was attacked. At least thirty of those people travelling on the bus were injured. Shakir Mir, who writes on Jammu and Kashmir for TOI Plus,
explains what happened. So basically when we talk about Riasi, we're talking about the the mountainous parts of Jammu, which are collectively called the peer Punjal region. They formed the the greater Himalayas that divide Kashmir valley from Jammu and at the same time these mountain jet out into the Pakistani side. So Ryasis is a place that is
tucked away in these mountains. So when we talk about on the road on which it happened, it was a link road which led to that highway, National Highway 144. It connected two places with each other. One was the Shivkhori shrine, which is the Shiva shrine in the Jammu where a lot of Hindu pilgrims come to pay homage to the the Katra region of the Jammu region where we know the famous Mata Vaishno Devi shrine is located. The pilgrims like close to 40 or over 40 in numbers.
But travelling in the bus which was coming down all its way down to Katra region, midway through his journey, it passed through a place which is really desolate. The roads are good, but one side there's a deep George, there's a deep defile and on the other side we see mountainous outcrops, forests and everything. But this isn't entirely petrol because Jammu is a vast region. You know, it's not possible for it to be petrol throughout. Pervasive petroling is not
possible. Nobody lives there. There are just towns here and scattered over here and there. And it's so dense. I mean, I spoke to the officials who have been serving in the Jammu region. They told me that it's, the region is such a dense, the vegetation is so dense that you can't even see, even in Kashmir, it's possible to see through the vegetation. You know, it's very sparse, but in those regions that the vegetation is so thick that you can't even see after like 3
meters or two meters. So that topography is itself conducive for militancy. You know, militants, militants have off late realized that we can leverage this kind of topography to stage attacks. Just as when the bus was driving through this area, the militants have like they were waiting and they were prowling and when the vehicle was approaching, they have come down, They have sprayed bullets all over the
vehicle. The police officers were there on the ground told me the first bullet hit the forehead of the driver. So he was he was the first to be shot and then he lost control of the bus. The bus wheeled away from the road and directly fell into the defile. Then the militants came again from behind and they continue to spray bullets on the bus because eyewitnesses have described how bullets continue to rain over
them. 11 particular eyewitness said that it was it was like a relentless hail bullets that was pelting down upon the bus endlessly. So it it wasn't just Milton's attack the bus and lost control and people died. They they made sure that even after the bus plunges into the George, they kept firing at the bus with an intention to kill the pilgrims, which is very clear. The attack is one of the most dramatic attacks in Jammu, a region that Shakir says has seen a spike in terror attacks over
the past few years. In today's episode when conversation with Shakir Mir about the implications of the Riasi attack and other terror attacks in the region. In the past week, there have been 4 terror attacks in three days in Jammu. One CRPF jawan was killed and six security personnel were injured in two gun battles with terrorists in the Kathua and Doda districts. Shakur explains how the epicenter of these more dramatic terror attacks may have shifted from Kashmir to Jammu.
He also explains how the terrorists involved and the weaponry they're using has changed. We started by talking about the Ryasi attack, in which the militants attacked a bus. Filled with pilgrims. Remember, Shakira had pointed out how it's difficult to patrol the region given the terrain, but have pilgrims ever been
targeted in this manner before? So when you say that this road is also not highly protected in the sense of relentless patrolling, but is this an area that has seen a lot of attacks before? Have we seen such attacks on
pilgrims of this scale before? Probably in the 90s, we have a reference of massacre of the Hindu civilians ahead and there in the Jammu region but not in the recent times except except in April 2022 when when militants planted a sticky bomb on a bus ferrying pilgrims from Qatra to Jammu region. The bus went up in flames and that which resulted in the in the death of old pilgrims because they were en route to the Mata Vaishudhvi Shine Base camp.
For a few days police thought that this is an accident but later the investigation showed that no, that sticky bomb had had been stuck to the bus and it was as a result of that bomb. It was a result of that incident that people died eventually. So that was the last time we have had such an incident in which pilgrims were specifically targeted. You spoke about the sort of link that the mountains have to Pakistan and though therefore it's used as a sort of route for
militancy. Could you talk about terrorism in Jammu and does the region typically see these sort of attacks? You know when we talk about overall militancy, terrorism situation in Kashmir, we talk, we have always been talking about in reference to Kashmir valley and not in Jammu. Even though in 90s we saw that militancy had flared up in Jammu region.
But that was a brief interlude. We can say given the larger trajectory of turmoil in Kashmir post 2019, we saw a very calibrated attempt by the militant groups to escalate the militant activities in the Jammu region. It looks like a very calibrated, very calculated strategy on part of their handlers. It started with October 2021 when there was a 19 day encounter. It was the longest ever encounter that we have seen in the recent times. It's a lot of surprise.
The security agencies, you know how how the encounter could stretch for this long in Kashmir. Then the most an encounter can last is like one day or 1 1/2 day. But 19 days it stretched together 9 to 11 casualties were there from the security forces side. And a lot of analysts were saying that you know, this is not a good sign because because this means that something is in the offing. This is never seen before. And exactly that happened.
I made a, you know, I, I was because I was, I was closely tracking these incidents. So I made a list of like fourteen such big events that have happened since that that October 2021 attack. The first was the the same case sticky bomb in which the Hindu pilgrims died. The second was the April 2022 encounter in which there was a fidane attack on on Prime Minister because he was visiting
the region at that time. So two suspected militants were killed at associated with the Jesh Muhammad were killed at that time. In the same year, we saw detonators were found in the Sidra region of the Punch district. In March 2022, there was an IED blast in Salatya choke in Udampur in which one person died and 14 were injured. You know, after that we saw the carnage in Dangri. Dangri is a place in in Rajouri
region. It happened on the Navy year's eve in 2022 in which 7 Hindu civilians were killed by the militants. And then recently there was an attack on a VDG village Defence Guard member. And and last year has been particularly very brutal because we saw four different attacks. In each of these attacks, we saw five CRPF jawans or Army jawans losing their lives, totaling 20.
So overall we see that there has been close to 40 security related casualties since October 2021, of which 20 alone, 20 plus alone have taken place in this this area, accounting for more than 50% of total killings in 2023, which again means that the violence, the theatre of violence has decisively shifted from Kashmir to the Jammu region.
And in the past, I think almost a year or two bank, we've spoken about, you know, how you explained to us how terrorism in Kashmir had changed into these smaller, less dramatic attacks, which are very focused with very focused targets. The ones that we're seeing in Jammu, in like Syria Sea and even in Kathua, they're not minor in using small weapons like the ones we spoke about with regard to Kashmir, right?
Yeah, exactly. In fact, Indian Express did a report last year in which they said that now Jammu is the site of high high impact, high intensity violent targets. Even though even though Kashmir may witness more militancy related incidents in number, but the high impact, high intensity targets which involve more planning, which are all more ammunition, which all involve more casualties. They are taking place in Jammu region rather than in Kashmir.
By evaluating the kind of nature of attacks that are taking place, it's clear that the bulk of them are taking place in the Jammu region rather than in Kashmir. In Kashmir, we'll occasionally see 11 militant with a pistol shooting at a cop or a member of minority member members or somebody who's accused of being an informer or alleged informer.
The high intensity attacks are in the Jammu region, which actually tells us a lot about the changing dynamics of militancy in Kashmir. Shaki says that unlike in Kashmir, the recent attacks in Jammu seem to have been carried out in areas with militants, knowing that it's more difficult to have perpetual monitoring in these regions.
Unlike Kashmir where you see security forces on a perpetual hunt for militants and eventually finding them out and and encounter taking place, in Jammu it's reverse. The initiative is resting with the militants. We always see that it's the militants who initiate the
strike. When you kill a security force member or when you kill a villager, when you kill a Pilgrim, it will take at least given the vastness of the area and given the roads and everything, it will take at least an hour for the reinforcements to arrive. Militant groups know this very well. So they know that this is very conducive for them to wait these low cost operations in the Jammu side.
Indriya see, at least the militants who involved escaped after the attacks, but do we know anything about who was involved as of now? Police and security forces are saying that it's the PAFF and TRF, these two organizations are taking responsibility, but they're both the fronts for already established militant groups like Lashkar E Taiba and Jaish E Muhammad. So Jaish is particularly the the organization which is involved in these in these killings.
So, so my sources told me that it's particularly the man named Sajid Jatt which is responsible. He's a Pakistani, he's what security forces called FT foreign terrorist. He has a Kashmiri wife. She's based in the Kulgam region of South Kashmir. He is the one who is who is remote controlling all these operations, who is sending more and more men into into Kashmir. They're mostly Pakistani
nationals. You know, there's not a single Kashmiri national who we have seen participating in these kind of attacks. Last month when we saw the attack on the IF convoy in, in, in, in Jammu, we there were videos of circulating about men, random men who who who fully suspected where the militants. They were clearly looking that they were outsiders. It is clearly those groups associated with what they call PF people's anti fascist front. That is the new nomenclature that they adopted.
But security forces say that they are the proxies are the fronts for the already established militant groups like Jaish E Muhammad. So these are the ones who are responsible for these attacks. And in Kathua in for the two men who carried out the attacks, the two gunmen were also killed. Is there anything that we know about them so far? Again, we they're Pakistani nationals, it's clear from their get up and lot of weaponry and lot of items have been seized
from them. The food items which have the labels made in Pakistan labels, those have been recovered. The bullets and ammunitions have been recovered. Interestingly, M4 rifles which the US made weapon which many security analysts suspect were are the same weapons that were left in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal and now are being used by the militant groups operating in Kashmir. Never before have these weapons been used against civilians or
against security forces. You know, police officers told me this is the first occasion when this US made weapon has been used against security forces and against the Indian
nationals in in Kashmir region. In fact, there's a recent press conference in which the DGP, the Director General of Police of J&K, said that our focus is now more on the Pakistani foreign militants than on the Kashmiri based militant groups because because the former has outnumbered the the latter because we now have more foreign militants here rather than the local ones whose recruitment has come down significantly in the
last five years. But with the sudden speed of attacks in Jammu specifically, there was a lull in at least the reporting of such incidents during and prior to the elections. Has something changed on the ground? Like is this normally when we see a sort of spike in attacks? What is there any explanation for why we're seeing the sudden surge?
So this has been a very in the discussion among the security circles before that whether or not the militants or the handlers have the wherewithal to carry out attack time with big events in India. I have been covering insurgency for like 5 years now. In 2022, I remember Home minister, Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited Kashmir and
suddenly Kashmir was that. That visit happened in October and throughout August, July, it was a peaceful but once the home minister's visit, he was drawing close. There was a certain escalation of the militancy related attacks. So somehow there's this speculation that militants are able to sort of tap into their networks and sort of escalate the attack to time them with the big events taking place just to send a message across.
What the new modus operandi of militants, especially those who are coming from Pakistan is that one, not to use any kind of digital communications. Second, not to rely on any of the Overground workers. Ogws were also, which is the security parlance for the militant associates, the non combatant participants in the militant tax who do the other kind of work, but don't take actual part in the militancy, just help militants with food and shelter and everything.
So they say that don't use don't rely on the Ogws who are indexed by the security forces already and don't use the digital communication. So when your strategy is this is pivoted on these two things, you can't coordinate it better. You you will have to sort of prolong your operations and it does not guarantee that you have selected this date for a particular attack and the attack will take place On this date
only. It's not every time that the militants can succeed in attacking it, just in one of the 10 attempts that they make that that will succeed. So this is what has happened in, in Katwa, in in Ryazi. And Shankar, finally, could you talk about the worries with this sudden jump in attacks and has there been any visible change in policy in the region because of these attacks? So I don't think there isn't going to be any change in
policy. In fact, it it suits the political messaging of the of the Prime Minister that that he will sort of give it back to the to the militant groups and their handlers. So I don't know what will happen what how the Indian security forces are going to respond to this. Typically what we expect is that they will ramp up the operations, the search operations and upon being found, they will they will execute the militants who are responsible for this, which has happened
previously. So what we have seen in the last five years is that sustained clampdown in Kashmir on what, what the security forces described as the terror ecosystem in which we have arrests, raids, banning of the outlawing of the large number of groups continuously people associated whoever some kind of past are being dismissed from the garment service, their passports are being denied. So this sustained clampdown as such remilitarization of Kashmir
at a lot of places. So this sustained clampdown has sort of put pressure on the militant groups in Kashmir to operate. So what they are doing is that they are they are making a strategy. You know, they are ratcheting up the attacks in Jammu region, they're escalating the, the violence in the Jammu region so that they can pin down the Indian forces in those areas so they can drive away all the attention from Kashmir into
those areas. And then what happens that will that will slacken the security grip on Kashmir. You know, this is the vision in mind to slacken the security grip in Kashmir so that things could be escalated in Kashmir as and when it appears conducive to the militant handle list. So this is the larger what security analyst here suspect could be the larger game plan in in trying to make Jammu the new
hotbed of insurgency. Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh and Sahil Gupta. For a daily spotlight on people, ideas and stories that matter, subscribe to us. We're available on the Times of India website, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or wherever else you get your podcast. For any new steps of feedback, mail me at arungeorge@timesgroup.com.