Pakistan hopes to open infiltration routes by striking terror in J&K’s Rajouri

New Delhi, Jan 03: The forward defence locations along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri are being targeted by Pakistani terrorists to help infiltration bids into India.

Reports said that there are four terror launching pads on the Pakistan side near the Rajouri sector. Around 25-30 terrorists are planning on infiltrating India using these launch pads at Lanjote, Nikail, Kotle and Khuiretta, the report also said.

On January 1 and 2, there were two major incidents reported in Rajouri. While in the first one terrorists opened fire and killed four people, the next day a bomb blast was reported at the nearby site.

The report said that the Intelligence assessment said that the terrorists of Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad had set up these launchpads and are trying to infiltrate their terrorists into Jammu and Kashmir. In a bid to do so, they want to target civilians so that it would distract the security forces, following which they could carry out the infiltrations.

The number of instructions in Jammu and Kashmir have gone down considerably. The annual 2021-2022 report of the Union Home Ministry said that 73 terrorist infiltration attempts were reported both through the International Border and Line of Control in 2021. This is in fact the lowest in five years.

In 2017 the number of infiltration bids were at 419 and in the following year it dropped to 328. This was largely because the Centre and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir adopted a multi-pronged approach to counter infiltration.

However there has been plenty of frustration among these terror groups owing to these developments. This has in turn led them to targeting civilians. If one were to notice, the year 2022 witnessed civilian killings and this was part of the psy-ops to drive fear. In Rajouri the plan is create unrest so that the paths to infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir opens up.