The Resistance Front (TRF), a militant outfit, which the police believe is Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in disguise, issued a threat ahead of the Amarnath Yatra, starting on June 30.
The annual pilgrimage didn't take place in the past two years due to Covid-19 pandemic. The government allowed it this year as the threat of Covid-19 has subsided.
The government has made adequate security arrangements for the yatra, which is expected to see participation of six-eight lakh people. An additional 300 companies of the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) have reached Kashmir for the purpose.
For the first time, yatris will be given Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to help the authorities to track them easily. RFID is a wireless tracking system that consists of tags and readers.
The TRF, in a letter, said, “They (the government) are going to use Amarnath Yatra for their dirty politics. From mere 15,000 to 8 lakh pilgrim registrations and from 15 days to 80 days is to provoke the sensitivity of the Kashmir situation.”
It said it has come to their knowledge that this “fascist regime” is pumping RSS members into the Valley in the name of Amarnath Yatra.
“We are not against any religious matter, but when such religious institutions are used against the Kashmir struggle, then it becomes a concern to take such matters into our hands," it said
The outfit said it would do its best to "hinder" the government's "schemes" if the Amarnath Yatra is used for "political and demographic gains".
It said the pilgrims would be safe unless they "interfered in the Kashmir issue" or gave "shelter to sanghi goons".
"We will openly target any stooge who becomes a pawn of this regime, and the blood of such stooges and pawns will spill like anything everywhere from Jammu to Kashmir," the outfit warned.
It said they used Kashmiri Pandits for their vote bank and the results were in front of everyone “And now they are going to use yatra for their dirty politics.’’
TRF has been active in Kashmir after the revocation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.
According to police, the group has been involved in several attacks on security forces and targeted attacks on political workers and members of minority communities.
In October, the police blamed the group for killing Kashmiri Pandits M.L. Bindroo, a noted chemist, and a school principal Supinder Kour and her colleague Deepak Chand in a higher secondary school in Srinagar.
The group is also accused of shooting non-local labourers working in Kashmir.
Targeted killings has become a serious security issue for the police and other security agencies in Kashmir after August 5, 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its statehood.
Observers believe that the targeted killings are rooted in fears that Article 370 was removed to pave the way for change of demography of Kashmir.
Not only the separatists, mainstream political parties like PDP have regularly accused the government of planning to change the demography of Muslim majority J&K.
