India Narrative

Failing to trigger a cycle of violence on the pattern of the 2010 and 2016 street turbulence in Kashmir after abrogation of Article 370, the separatist operatives made an organised attempt at Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid in the holy month of fasting in April. It, however, failed as the mosque’s management volunteers forced the saboteurs out and helped the Police to identify, arrest and book them for the criminal offence.    During the investigation, Srinagar District Police seized smartphones of some saboteurs and retrieved their data that suggested not only their free access to the alleged killers of a Police officer but also their contact through smartphones with their handlers in Pakistan. “There was an organised plan of sabotage of peace and clear instructions to the local saboteurs to create a fresh season of violence from Jamia Masjid”, SSP Srinagar, Rakesh Balwal, disclosed to India Narrative. “We have booked the saboteurs and gathered technical evidence of their links to Pakistan th

  With his frequent visits to Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has created a record of sorts. If his scheduled visit of 24 April 2022 materialises, he will become India’s first PM after 1980 to have visited J&K as many as 21 times. Modi is known to have toured Kashmir in the thick of militancy in 1990-94. According to the local BJP leaders, he visited all the valley’s six districts in 1993 when most of the mainstream politicians had resigned under the fear and diktat of gun. Former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had escaped to London. Several of his ex-Ministers and MLAs had been killed by terrorists and others—with exceptions like Aga Syed Mehmood, Mohammad Shafi Bhat and Mohammad Sayeed Akhoon—had migrated and settled in Jammu. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who worked as the union Home minister for 11 months in 1989-90, used to live in Delhi. Ghulam Nabi Azad, another former Union Minister from J&K, had reduced his visibility after his brother-in-law was kidnapped and

Dispelling the western media narrative, faithfully echoed by a section of the Indian national media that Kashmir as a deserted ghost territory after withdrawal of its semi-autonomous status in August 2019, as many as 15 million tourists and pilgrims visited Jammu and Kashmir, notwithstanding the coronavirus pandemic, in the last 15 months. According to the most authentic official statistics, a total of 1,51,66,887 tourists have visited Jammu and Kashmir in 15 months from 1 January 2021 to 31 March 2022, notwithstanding the Covid-19 pandemic. It breaks all the records of the corresponding period in the last about 10 years. “The pandemic and terrorism are a reality, now both diminishing, but parallel to it runs the inflow of over million tourists—at an average of 0ne million each month”, said a senior bureaucratic source. As usual, the Mata Vaishno Devi pilgrims account for more than 90 percent of the visitors who have visited the Union Territory during the last 15 months. Even if all th