Delhi Updated: Mar 29, 2018
Despite government’s multipronged strategy in Kashmir to keep youth away from militancy, at least 27 of them have joined different militant outfits in the first three months of this year, police officials said.
Locals joining militancy remains a major challenge for the government, even as it talks about involving Kashmiri youth in development activities so as to keep them away from militancy. According to police records, on an average, one boy joined militant ranks every three days in 2017. The trend looks similar so far this year as well.
“Many more youth are missing from different villages. So, the number can increase,” a senior police official told ET.
Police suspect that five boys who went missing from Srinagar, Pulwama and Anantnag districts on March 27, might have joined militant ranks. Photographs of two among them — a teenager from Srinagar, Fahad Mushtaq and Rouf Khanday a college student from Anantnag — surfaced on social media brandishing Kalashnikov rifles. The family of Mushtaq has appealed him to return. Meanwhile, Kashmir University has written to the Jammu and Kashmir Police about another student missing from its earth sciences department .
Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba, during a two-day visit to the state earlier this week, directed the J&K government, police, army and the CRPF to engage youth in different developmental activities and wean them away from militancy. During the meeting, officials told Gauba that inclination of local youth towards militancy was growing, officers in the know of the discussions said.
On March 24, Junaid Ahmad Sehrai, 30, son of recently appointed Tehreek-i-Hurriyat chairman Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, joined Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He was a management graduate and also worked for an ecommerce company.
According to police records, 124 locals joined militancy in 2017, compared with 88 the year before and 66 in 2015. Before that, 53 locals took to arms in 2014 and the number was just 16 in 2013.
The joining of locals holds major symbolic value for militancy, otherwise, at many instances, young local militants, police say, have barely put up a fight during encounters due to lack of proper training and ammunition. Besides, J&K police and the army have managed to “reorganise and revitalise” its informer network that was disturbed and damaged during the five-month-long protests in 2016, after the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.
