Union Home Secretary to chair security review meeting in Jammu today

Jammu : Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan will arrive in Jammu on Sunday to chair an important security review meeting with top police and security officials of Jammu and Kashmir, sources told the news agency.

They said that the meeting will be attended by chiefs of police, paramilitary forces, central forces and officials of intelligence agencies.

This is Govind Mohan’s second security review meeting in Jammu and Kashmir as the Union Home Secretary. He had chaired his first meeting in Srinagar in December last year.
The Union Home Secretary’s Jammu visit comes a day after security forces recovered bodies of three missing civilians from a water channel in the upper reaches of Bani-Billiwar of Kathua.

Slain civilians, including a child were from a marriage party. They went missing and remained untraced for more than 60 hours. The trio Yogesh (32), Darshan (40) and Varun (14), are believed to be cousins.
Moreover, Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh, according to the KNO, confirmed terrorist involvement in the killings.

In a post on X, the Union Minister in Hindi (loosely translated as) : “The brutal killing of 3 youths by terrorists in Bani area of district Kathua is extremely sad as well as a matter of concern. There seems to be a deep conspiracy behind spoiling the atmosphere in this peaceful area”.

“We have discussed this matter with the concerned officials. The Union Home Secretary himself is reaching Jammu so that the situation can be reviewed on the spot. I am confident that such incidents do not happen again and people’s confidence remains strong,” Dr Singh wrote.

*MEETING TO BE HELD IN 2 SESSIONS*

Sources told KNO that the Union Home Secretary would chair the security review meeting at Jammu Convention Centre. “The meeting will be held in two sessions, top brass of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) officials dealing with J&K, including J&K Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo, state Home Secretary Chandrakar Bharti, DGP Nalin Prabhat, Additional DG CID, Nitish Kumar, IGP Jammu, Bhim Sen Tuti, IGP Kashmir, V.K. Birdi and senior officers of BSF, CRPF and intelligence agencies will attend the meeting,” sources said.

They added that Superintendents of Police of all the 20 districts of J&K are expected to attend one session of the meeting. Sources said that while the meeting will review the overall security in the entire J&K, it will be more focused on reviewing measures to make the Jammu division free of terrorists.

“The Government of India (GOI) is concerned about the presence of terrorists in the higher reaches of the Jammu division, who should have been neutralised during the winter months due to climatic conditions but are reported to be still active in those areas,” sources said, as per KNO.

“As most of these terrorists are believed to be foreigners, their survival in extreme winter is not possible without some local support,” they added.
“The MHA is concerned about the reports of terrorists’ presence in the upper reaches of Kathua, Udhampur, Doda, Kishtwar, Reasi, Rajouri and Poonch districts. A strategy is likely to be worked out to neutralize these terrorists jointly by the Army, paramilitary forces, and Jammu and Kashmir Police. The exact number of these terrorists is still not known, but they reportedly move around in groups of three to four at a time”, sources added.

Pertinently, Union Home Minister Amit Shah reviewed the J&K security thrice in February month.

Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha also chaired two back-to-back security review meetings, one in Srinagar and the other in Jammu last month—(KNO)