An outrage in Jammu

For the government of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the November 24 terrorist attack on the Raghunath temple in Jammu is an unpleasant indicator of what lies ahead.

THE white paper patch on the foyer windowpane of the K.C. Residency Hotel in Jammu is an inadvertent advertisement of the terrorist assault of November 24. A single bullet from an assault rifle had cracked the glass open, and the flying shards of glass injured a chef and a shop assistant. On the road outside, 12 people were killed and 52 injured. But Jammu, like Srinagar, has learned to cope with violent times. The Residency Road market is, as usual, packed; the damage to the walls and idols of the famous Raghunath temple is almost invisible; the bloodstains at the home of Kirti Gupta, where one of the two terrorists who carried out the attack was killed, have been washed away. But the political fallout of the attack is going to be less easy to will away. For the government of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the violence of November 24 is an unpleasant indicator of what lies ahead.

Shortly before 7-00 p.m., when the Residency Road area was due for a scheduled power-cut, one of the two terrorists entered the main gate of the Raghunath temple. He sought to brush his way past a metal-detector installed just inside the main gate, but a police guard tried to grab hold of the bag he was carrying. The terrorist threw a grenade and ran towards the main temple building, firing with the assault rifle he had pulled out of the bag. One Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) guard was killed in this first exchange of fire. Another, ensconced behind a bulletproof metal sheet on a dome overlooking the entrance, chose not to open fire. Nor did the CRPF personnel at the entrance try and chase the terrorist. It is possible that, given the darkness, they wished to avoid damage to other security personnel and civilians in the vicinity. Whatever the truth, the confused initial response to the attack illustrated that while security personnel are posted in large numbers to prevent terrorist attacks, they rarely have clearly worked through protocols on what to do if one actually takes place.

As the grenade went off inside the temple complex, the second terrorist walked up the Residency Road market, throwing grenades and firing at passers-by. Ten of the 12 fatalities caused by the attack happened here, not inside the temple itself. Security officers assigned to a legislator who was visiting the K.C. Residency Hotel, and armed personnel in the police post on the main road chose not to intervene, again because of the darkness and chaos. The terrorist, meanwhile, made his way towards the Paison-Wala temple nearby. Police guards had closed the gates to the shrine, however, and the terrorist hid out in a vacant lot, perhaps hoping to escape once the chaos died down.

It was only when Director-General of Police Ashok Suri arrived at the Raghunath temple that a search was initiated for the second terrorist. He ordered his own security guard to cordon off the Paison-Wala temple area. The State police's Special Operations Group (SOG) soon joined the search, and a firefight ensued.

Inside the Raghunath temple, police personnel had succeeded in pinning down the first terrorist just outside the inner sanctum. Hiding behind a pillar, the terrorist exchanged fire with the police. Pilgrims who were to the rear of the sanctum were, however, safe.

With the immediate prospect of a hostage crisis averted, Senior Superintendent of Police Farooq Khan led a team close to the pillar, sheltered behind bulletproof sheets. Late that night, a National Security Guard hostage crisis team waiting to depart from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi was told to stand down, for the terrorist had been killed.

The second police unit outside the Paison-Wala temple, however, had to wait until dawn. Kirti Gupta, a housewife, woke up to discover the second terrorist asleep in her kitchen. With remarkable presence of mind, she shut the kitchen door behind her. A few minutes later, he was dead.

A Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) listening station near Jalandhar, sources told Frontline, picked up intercepts on a Lashkar-e-Toiba frequency referring to the two terrorists `Bambar Khan' and `Babar'. The intercept bore out the content of a late-night call to Suri's home. "This is the Lashkar-e-Toiba," the caller told the DGP. "We have finished one job; it is your turn next."

POLICE action now gave way to political polemic. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad(VHP) charged the People's Democratic Party(PDP)-Congress(I) alliance with "connivance" in the tragedy, claiming that they had acted "with a view to triggering an exodus of Hindus from the region". A VHP demonstration to protest the attack, however, drew only a few dozen faithfuls. The reason for the public disinterest was only too apparent. Just months earlier, the Hindu Right had launched a near-identical communal assault on the National Conference. On June 29, the Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal (All India Activists' Forum) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) charged the then-State government with "assiduously carrying forward the anti-Hindu and anti-Bharat policies". Six days earlier, a resolution of the VHP's Kendriya Margdarshak Mandal (Central Advisory Committee) had described the regime of former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah as a "Muslim sultanate". Both resolutions came in response to a March terrorist attack on the Raghunath temple. After that attack, VHP senior vice-president Giriraj Kishore had warned that those seeking to attack Hindu temples "should also understand that they had many shrines related to their religion in the rest of the country, which can also be made targets".

As in the past, the Bharatiya Janata Party maintained an ambiguous posture on this abusive rhetoric, choosing not to condemn the VHP's flagrantly communal attack on the PDP-Congress(I) alliance. Instead, Union Minister of State for Home I.D. Swami joined in the Hindu Right's assault, albeit from a different angle. The November 24 killings, he said, made it imperative for the State government to review its `healing touch' policy. Jailed terrorists, he continued, should not be released "indiscriminately".

Two days later, Union Home Minister L.K. Advani joined in and said that the State government's decision to release alleged terrorists from jail had been made without the consent of the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.). Predictably enough, the Congress(I) protested furiously, insisting that New Delhi had given its assent to the release of all those allowed out of jail by the Jammu and Kashmir government. Since it is highly unlikely that the I.B. would have committed itself in writing, the whole truth will probably never be known.

Some facts, however, are evident. Advani may have been right when he said that the I.B. had not agreed to the release of jailed terrorists, but he was being economical with the truth. Six terrorism-accused figures had indeed been released in early November, but none of them had any conceivable relationship with the events of November 24 or, for that matter, with any other recent violent act. Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik, booked on money-laundering charges under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in March, had obtained bail soon afterwards. He was re-arrested immediately under the Public Safety Act, a State-specific piece of legislation that gives the government enormous powers of preventive detention. The State government had notified the I.B. of its intention to give him a month's parole, a move that some officials in the organisation were less than delighted with. He had, moreover, been released from jail on at least five previous occasions, a fact Advani chose not to mention. Indeed, Advani himself had suggested, in the build-up to the Assembly elections, that the release of "political prisoners" would be considered, an evident reference to Malik.

The State government had even less of an enabling role in the release of the other five terrorism-accused figures. Ayub Dar and Nazir Sheikh had earlier obtained bail in a number of criminal cases, but were re-arrested by the State police on fraud charges. This time, when they again obtained bail, the government chose not to bring fresh charges.

Similarly, fresh charges were not brought against Jamaat-e-Islami leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani's son-in-law Altaf Funtoosh, when he obtained bail in a money-laundering case. Shaukat Bakshi, charged with the kidnapping of Sayeed's daughter Rubiya, actually obtained bail and was released on November 1, a day before the new Chief Minister was sworn in to office. Abdul Aziz Dar, a terrorist infamous at the outset of terrorism under the alias `General Moosa', had spent over a decade in jail, but no serious charges of murder, kidnapping or rape had ever been brought against him. Sayeed's government had indeed broken with the long-standing practice of re-arresting alleged terrorists who had obtained bail, an exercise that grew out of the realisation that an ineffective criminal justice system simply did not deliver convictions. It had done so, however, in the cases of relatively peripheral figures.

THE Chief Minister has moved rapidly to make peace with the Centre. He has, for one, assured the Union government that the practice of re-arresting terrorists released on bail will be observed in the future, at least in cases where the charges are serious. Plans to disband the ruthlessly effective SOG, too, have been shelved, and Chief Secretary Sudhir Bloeria has now been asked to prepare plans to `merge' the outfit into the State police. The plan is pure chicanery, since the SOG has since its outset been made up of State police personnel and has operated within its command structure. Sayeed has also moved to disarm critics in Jammu, distributing relief to the relatives of terrorism victims, who are entitled to government jobs but rarely received them under N.C. rule. The beneficiaries, who belong to both the Kashmir and Jammu regions, include the families of the 28 Hindus massacred by terrorists at Prankot, near Reasi, in April 1998. In recent speeches, Sayeed has also been hawkish on Pakistan, blaming that country for the Raghunath temple attack and demanding that it stop cross-border terrorism.

None the less, the PDP appears to have no clear paradigm for actually dealing with terrorism. At his first meeting of the Unified Headquarters (UHQ) of security organisations in Jammu and Kashmir on November 18, Sayeed demanded that "no mercy" be shown to Pakistani nationals fighting in the State. He, however, said nothing of policy towards ethnic-Kashmiri terrorists, notably elements of the Hizbul Mujahideen who backed the PDP's election campaign in south Kashmir. The statement was, of course, open to interpretation, but the State police's daily bulletin on terrorist violence shows how the security establishment has understood it. Since the UHQ meeting, 18 suspected Pakistani nationals have been killed in five major engagements up to November 30. Not a single ethnic Kashmiri terrorist has been killed, and just two have been arrested. This posture has also meant that terrorists have been able to initiate offensive operations with relative ease. November has seen just over two terrorists killed for each security force trooper lost, the worst figures since the dislocation of counter-terrorist operations during the Kargil War.

Part of the problem is that Sayeed, and his daughter Mehbooba Mufti, have elevated the idea of a `healing touch' to quasi-theological canon. At the UHQ meeting, Sayeed asked the security forces to "remove people's alienation, which can be done with all anti-insurgency operations remaining transparent." Low-intensity warfare is however, by its nature, a dirty business. The nuts-and-bolts business of locating terrorist sympathisers, safe-houses, and their overground support structure cannot be undertaken in a "transparent" manner. More important, the friction between ordinary people and the security establishment will only be minimised if violence is contained at acceptable levels. The real problem in the State is the continued killings of civilians by terrorists overwhelmingly Kashmiri Muslims whom the PDP seeks to represent and not the harassment of people by security organisations. Between November 1 and 29, 39 civilians, all Muslims, were killed in Kashmir, just two in retaliatory firing by the security forces. In Jammu, 14 Hindu and 16 Muslim civilians were killed in the same period just one of them victim of crossfire.

"Goli Nahi, Boli"(dialogue, not bullets), Sayeed recently proclaimed in the Assembly. Pakistan-based organisations such as the Jamait-ul-Mujaheddin and the Lashkar-e-Toiba have already expressed their disinterest in dialogue. As Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee learned to his cost during the Ramzan ceasefire of 2000, unilateral moves towards dialogue paradoxically increase violence, since terrorist groups have an interest in strengthening their bargaining position before coming to the negotiating table. Nor does the PDP appear to have anything that resembles a road map for either the course or the content of a future dialogue. Continued violence will not only cost the PDP-Congress(I) government the goodwill that brought it to power, but accelerate the processes of communalisation in Jammu. Between January and October-end this year, Jammu district saw 77 civilian deaths in terrorist violence, up from just two in the same period in 2001. Clearly defined means are needed to address the problem. Failing this, the now-discredited Hindu Right will again begin to gain legitimacy, with awful consequences.

The Raghunath temple attack, then, has made clear the writing on the wall. It is now up to Sayeed to pen his response.