JAMMU, Feb 11 (2001) – A Pakistan-based militant group warned troops from special police units in India’s troubled Jammu and Kashmir state to resign from their jobs or face further suicide attacks.
The warning by Laskhar-e-Taiba, in a statement circulated to media organisations in the disputed Himalayan state late on Saturday, came a day after one of its suicide squads attacked the main police centre in Srinagar and killed nine Indian policemen.
Two of the four-member suicide squad were killed during the attack in the state’s summer capital, which started on Friday night. The other two escaped, officials said.
“Police and Special Task Force (STF) personnel are warned to give up their jobs en masse failing which suicide squads would launch attacks on them,” a Lashkar-e-Taiba spokesman, Sallah-ud-Din, said in the statement.
STF units are anti-terrorist police and have been accused by Laskhar and other militant and separatist groups of killing detainees in Kashmir.
Muslim separatist rebels have been waging an 11-year-old rebellion against Indian rule in Kashmir, which has left over 30,000 people dead.
A unilateral Indian ceasefire, or suspension of offensive operations, is holding in Kashmir despite high-profile attacks on civilians by suspected militants and on security forces by guerrillas.
On Saturday morning, 15 people, including seven children, were burnt to death in an attack on a village 175 km (110 miles) north of Jammu, the winter capital of the strife-torn state.
Five of the dead were members of an armed village defence committee, set up by the state government to help security forces combat militants in rural areas.
DEBATE OVER CEASEFIRE
“Babarians!” was the headline of The Hindustan Times on Sunday about the attack by militants.
Attacks such as these and the killing of six minority Sikhs in Kashmir by suspected militants eight days ago have led to calls for a review of the ceasefire, including one by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Attack and atrocities by militants continue, including the recent attacks on Sikhs. It (the ceasefire) should be reviewed,” BJP spokesman, J.P. Mathur, told Reuters on Friday.
But political analyst Prem Shankar Jha disagrees, saying calling off the ceasefire – which has been extended twice since it started on November 28 last year – would play into militants’ hands.
“It would be tough to extend the ceasefire again in the face of continuing violence. It’s a battle of minds and hearts. But calling off the ceasefire would be playing into the hands of groups like Lashkar and their backers in Pakistan,” Jha told Reuters in New Delhi by telephone.
Jha said that calling off the ceasefire would once again result in intrusive policing in Jammu and Kashmir like the unpopular cordon-and-search operations where hundreds were made to line up for hours as troops looked for potential suspects.
“The military loss suffered by our forces has to be weighed against the political loss of calling off the ceasefire in Kashmir,” he said.
India controls 45 percent of the disputed Himalayan region, Pakistan a third and China the rest.
