The rise of the National Investigation Agency has come as a great help in cracking the terror cases in J&K. The latest one the Pulwama blast case in which a suicide bomber of Jaish-e-Mohammad blew himself by ramming his car into the CRPF bus killing 40 soldiers a year-and-a-half ago. Unless such heinous crimes are dealt with a sense of urgency, terrorists and their accomplices do start believing in their invincibility; the people at large also start believing that terrorist is the winning side and they provide him logistical support. It’s a fact that terrorists can’t operate without some level of local support, mostly done in lieu of monetary grains or in some case ideological leanings.
NIA has so far arrested seven persons mostly from around the villages where the ghastly attack took place. All of them were involved in rendering logistical support to the Jaish-e-Mohammad group that carried a huge quantity of RDX from the border and assembled it as an IED to be fitted in a car and blew it up. NIA efforts to bring the guilty to the book have a saluting impact on the situation. The State suddenly emerges as an entity that is in control and means business. It sends shivers down the spine of the collaborators and they start distancing themselves from terrorists.
Unfortunately in the past, an impression was created as if there is a premium on terrorism. Those actively and openly involved in creating an ecosystem for this were never touched. In fact, looking back one wonders why the governments in the past didn’t take the investigation into terror attacks seriously. In this ecosystem, terrorists became bold and people like Yasin Malik roamed around freely and made bold admission of their involvement in acts of terror on international televisions.
The terrorism was thus allowed to flourish in Kashmir and common people were pushed to help terrorists as there was hardly a serious follow up of the cases. Anyway, it’s never late to mend.