Officially, authorities on Wednesday confirmed that 60 Pakistani women married to ex-Kashmiri militants were deported to Pakistan through the Attari-Wagah border.
The move follows the gruesome April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, when 26 civilians—25 of them were tourists who had come in as visitors, and one local—were killed. The officials stated that the women who were deported were apprehended from various districts within Jammu and Kashmir, i.e., Srinagar, Baramulla, Kupwara, Budgam, and Shopian. They were brought to Punjab in buses before being handed over to Pakistani authorities.
The majority of these women had initially arrived in Kashmir as part of the 2010 rehabilitation program, which sought to rehabilitate former militants who had given up militancy and returned from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
As part of a similar action, officials also deported 11 Pakistanis who had overstayed their visas for almost 45 years. These people had been living illegally in Mendhar and Poonch areas.
In the wake of the Pahalgam massacre, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had ordered all states and Union Territories to identify and deport Pakistani nationals living illegally in India immediately.
The Pahalgam Baisaran meadow massacre, which was committed by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants allegedly aided by Pakistan, has strained the relationship between the two nations considerably. National outrage at the massacre has been extensive.
Responding aggressively to the incident, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated, "The terrorists, their handlers and backers would be pursued and hunted down to the ends of the earth."
Following a top-level meeting with the defence minister, the national security advisor, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), and the three service chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, PM Modi gave military personnel complete freedom to decide the nature, timing, and scale of their response to the attack.
Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Manoj Sinha also called on Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi in Srinagar for a full security briefing. In the course of the meeting, the L-G asked the military to use all available force to remove the killers.
Exercising zero tolerance, security personnel recently destroyed properties of terrorists and their sympathisers. Two of such properties—the ones owned by Adil Hussain Thokar and Asif Sheikh, both LeT activists and culprits involved in the attack on Pahalgam—were destroyed at Tral and Bijbehara, respectively. So far, security personnel have destroyed the homes of 10 active militants functioning in the Kashmir Valley.
On Monday, the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature unanimously adopted a resolution denouncing the dastardly terror attack, reflecting a rare show of political resolve across party lines against terrorism.
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