J-K witnesses spike in arrest of terrorists post Article 370 abrogation

A massive spike has been witnessed in the arrest of terrorists and terror suspects from the Kashmir Valley since August last year when the Centre abrogated Article 370, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

According to the data compiled by security forces, this year even while the whole world is busy fighting COVID-19, security forces were busy in nabbing terrorists or suspects involved in promoting terrorism in the Valley.

From January till July 15 this year, a total of 150 suspects/terrorists have been arrested from the Valley. The spike in the arrest of terrorists also helped security forces to gather information about other terrorists/suspects active in Jammu and Kashmir. Prominent among these would be the case of Riyaz Naikoo, who was eliminated by security forces in May this year on the basis of a tip-off they received from arrested terrorists.

In August last year, forces had nabbed eight terrorists/suspects and in the next four months managed to catch 18, 10, 11 and six terrorists/suspects for being allegedly involved in terror activities.

But this year since January security forces have been consistently busy in various encounters and a visible spike has been noticed in the arrests made by them. In January, the forces nabbed 28 suspects and for next five months 17, 17, 25, 29 and 26 suspects/terrorists were arrested.

Furthermore, in July, a suspect has been arrested on every other day.

Though there has been a very marginal rate of surrender by terrorists in the Valley with just three putting down their arms in the first six months but the increase in arrests has been almost threefold in January-June this year when compared to the figures in the same phase in 2019.