10 days on, security agencies yet to identify Dangri attackers and their affiliation

According to official sources, the Army and the police are on the lookout for the attackers in the vast and dense forests of Rajouri and Poonch districts

Security agencies in Jammu and Kashmir are yet to identify the perpetrators of the Dangri twin attacks 10 days ago that left seven civilians dead and 14 injured. The agencies have also not named any militant outfit for its role in the attacks.

So far, the agencies have been able to establish that two armed militants opened fire on the civilians in three houses on the fateful evening of January 1 in the Dangri area of Rajouri. 

Vast forest areas of the Pir Panjal Valley’s Rajouri and Poonch districts, including the upper reaches, witnessed major joint combing operations by the Army and the police in the past one week, but the attackers remain untraced, official sources said.

Additional checkpoints have been set up and house-to-house searches are being conducted in locations on the basis of suspicions. Speculative searches have also been increased across the region, sources said. 

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Sources said several small hamlets closer to the Line of Control (LoC) were also searched in the twin districts. The challenge for the security agencies is that Rajouri is very close to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The area near the 120-km-long LoC is a mountainous region and has a thick forest cover.

Security agencies are also looking into the angle of the attackers crossing back into PoK, but they have not been able to reach any concrete conclusion, sources said.  The agencies are focusing on old networks of militant supporters and a major clampdown has been launched against them. One official estimate suggests that around 50 suspects have been questioned to establish clues about the movement of the attackers. There is no word on whether the attackers were part of an old group of infiltrators or fresh ones.