IED, bombs menace growing more in J&K than Naxal theatre: Report

Jammu and Kashmir has seen a steady increase in IED blasts and other bombing incidents over the last five years, with 2018 witnessing a 57 per cent jump in such incidents while two other major theatres of violence — Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-hit areas and North East — saw the number of such incidents going down, a latest report has found.

While the state that shares border with both Pakistan and China saw a total of 37 incidents of bombing (IED and explosive ordnance triggered) in 2014, these incidents grew to 46 in 2015, 69 in 2016, 70 in 2017 and as high as 117 during the last year.

A report in this context was presented by the National Bomb Data Centre (NBDC) of the NSG during a two-day international conference in Delhi, that concluded recently, on the menace and threats posed by IEDs. The NBDC of the elite ‘black cats’ commando force is the national repository of all IED and bombing incidents that take place in the country and the unit also conducts post-blast probe of all incidents, including the Pulwama blast case.

The report made a special mention of J&K and the growing threat of IED and similar explosives in the state at a time when investigators suspect the deadly attack in Pulwama on February 14 was executed by a ‘lone wolf ’ Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist by blowing off a 20-kg strong RDX mix explosive, laden in a car, next to a troop-carrier bus plying as part of a convoy on the Jammu-Srinagar Highway. “There was considerable decrease in IED blast incidents in all regions of the country except in J&K where terrorists resorted to increased use of IEDs during 2018,” the report said.

It added while IED blast incidents reduced to 77 last year from 98 in 2017 in the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) hit areas of the country, such incidents in J&K rose by 57 per cent from 21 in 2017 to 33 during last year.

The IED blast incidents in the North East insurgency theatre reduced to 32 last year as compared to 66 in 2017, indicating a decrease of 52 per cent, the report said.

It said while there was a “steep decrease” in the number of IED blast incidents in the country as a whole, fatalities due to these explosions increased “considerably” in all the violence theatres of J&K, LWE and North East.