A major tragedy was averted with the timely detection of a seven-kg Improvised Explosive Device (IED) near the crowded general bus stand area in Jammu city on Sunday.
Police said the IED was detected acting on specific information and a man from south Kashmir’s Pulwama district has been arrested in connection with the recovery.
The recovery comes on a day when the nation is remembering 40 CRPF jawans, who were killed when a suicide bomber of Jaish-e-Muhammad outfit rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a paramilitary convoy at Lethpora in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district on the same day in 2019.
Two years after the deadly attack, security had been heightened across Kashmir. A police officer said it seems the militants had chosen Jammu to carry out an attack “as security in Kashmir was foolproof.”
“Most likely a major terrorist attack was being planned in Jammu to coincide with the second anniversary of Pulwama attack," he added.
In the last week, police have arrested two militants in Jammu in two separate operations. The arrested militants include Hidayatullah Malik, chief of lesser-known militant outfit Lashkar-e-Mustafa, which is a believed to be a front organisation of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in Kashmir and Zahoor Rather, affiliated with TRF (The Resistance Force), a front organisation of the Lashker-e-Toiba (LeT).