Home Ministry calls high-level meet to discuss J&K security scenario amid targeted attacks

In light of the repeated targeted attacks by terrorists on Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) personnel, armed forces, and civilians the Union Home Ministry has called a high-level meeting with the top brass of Police and Intelligence agencies in New Delhi today, December 23. 

The meeting, called by Union Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla will be attended by top officials of the Home Ministry and heads of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs).

A Counter Strategy to the targeted killings and winter strategy will be the main agenda of the MHA meeting. Besides the security situation, officials may also discuss the functioning of the newly created State Investigation Agency (SIA) on the lines of National Investigation Agency (NIA), modernization of Police Stations and Police Posts, and misuse of certain prisons by the militants.

Director-General of Police (DGP) Dilbag Singh and DGP CID Rashmi Ranjan Swain, who is also head of the SIA, are likely to attend the meeting among others from J&K.

Terrorist attacks rise in Kashmir

The meeting comes in the wake of recent attacks on security personnel including a bus in which three cops were martyred and 14 suffered injuries. The police personnel however thwarted a major plot by the militants to snatch weapons and inflict more casualties. Even on Tuesday, an Assistant Sub Inspector of Police and a civilian were killed in two separate targeted attacks in the Kashmir valley. Previously, the militants had killed over a dozen civilians including minorities and non-locals.

Earlier on December 19, the Director-General of National Investigation Agency (NIA) & D-G CRPF Kuldeep Singh had chaired a key meeting on the security situation in the Union Territory. Singh, along with security forces chalked out strategies to identify terror sympathisers in J&K and devise resolutions to keep things in check.