Panic Stations

Just before midnight on February 22, the Jammu & Kashmir police, assisted by army and paramilitary forces, conducted multiple raids and arrested over 200 separatists.

- Asit Jolly and Moazum Mohammad

While the majority belong to the Abdul Hamid Fayaz-led Jamaate-Islami, several others, including Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik and Maulana Mushtaq Veeri of the Wahhabist Jamiat e-Ahle Hadith, were also detained. While the unexplained raids continued into the wee hours, a hundred additional companies of the BSF, CRPF, SSB and the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) arrived the following day. The 10,000 personnel were deployed to ‘static guard duties’, hitherto assigned to the CRPF in Srinagar and other sensitive locations. The BSF was returning to a civilian policing role in Kashmir after more than a decade.

The deployment and raids spread panic in the Valley, even though it was bracing for a ‘big crackdown’ in the wake of the February 14 Pulwama attack. Most locations in Srinagar’s normally bustling downtown had begun shutting at dusk, even the chemist stores along the busy road to the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital. IAF fighter jets flying sorties through the night only added to the sense of foreboding.