Amarnath shrine pilgrims stay the course
Monday’s attack on a bus fails to deter people from making the journey
Undeterred by the terror attack that claimed seven lives, the annual pilgrimage to Amarnath cave shrine in Kashmir continued, yesterday, with thousands of devotees leaving for the temple amid tightened security.
The blame game also started, with the opposition questioning the government’s “lack of action” on reported intelligence inputs about a possible terror attack on the pilgrims even as deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh acknowledged that there was a security lapse.
Both in Delhi and in Srinagar, high-level review meetings were held. Home Minister Rajnath Singh held a meeting with top government officials including National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and the chiefs of Intelligence Bureau and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti held separate meetings with officials.
The bodies of the pilgrims were flown to Gujarat and Maharashtra yesterday.
The Gujarat government announced a Rs1 million (Dh56,914) compensation to the kin of each of the victims from the state.
Two of the women who died were from Maharashtra; their bodies were sent to Dahanu town in the coastal district of Palgarh, around 100km northwest of Mumbai.
Still on the way
Authorities in Kashmir said another batch of 3,289 Amarnath pilgrims left Jammu for the Kashmir Valley with a convoy of 185 security vehicles.
Hundreds more left from the base camp in Pahalgam — barely 50km from the scene of Monday’s attack — for the arduous trek to the shrine where devotees worship an ice stalagmite believed to be a symbol of the Hindu deity Shiva.
Hundreds of thousands Hindus make the trip in JulyAugust to the Amarnath cave, situated at an altitude of more than 3,600 metres in the Lidder Valley of south Kashmir.
The terror strike on Monday on the Jammu-Srinagar highway in south Kashmir district of Anantnag left six women and a man dead after militants opened fire at an unescorted bus that was carrying at least 60 pilgrims on their way back from the Amarnath shrine.
Nineteen people were wounded in the attack — only the second on Amarnath pilgrims in the nearly three decades of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir. Police blamed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-eTaiba for the attack and said the group was trying to stoke communal discord. But the outfit denied any role and called the attack “reprehensible”.
A possible security lapse is being blamed for the attack as the bus had no escort and was moving after the quick response teams of the security forces had withdrawn from the highway after sundown, making the vehicle vulnerable to attacks. Pilgrims’ movement on the highway is supposed to stop at 7pm.