T
he peace of South Kashmir has been disturbed this week following the assassination of Head Constable Ashiq Hussain Qureshi by a lone terrorist in the Lal Chowk market area of Anantnag. The Head Constable, aged 45, was on duty with regards to the ongoing Amarnath Yatra when he was shot dead. He was a resident of Beerwah, Budgam district, leaving behind his mother, wife, and three children.
Eyes witnessed that the terrorist had worn a black cap and had carried a bag which concealed the assault rifle which was used to shoot the Head Constable. The police have now appealed to the people not to upload any video of the attack on the internet, and warned strict actions against those who do so as there is a danger of either praising the terrorist or hampering the investigation.
The killer gang responsible for this attack is reported to be the Resistance Front (TRF). It is a breakaway faction of the Pakistani terrorist outfit LeT, which has been declared so by the UN Security Council. The TRF was formed following the withdrawal of the special status of the region in 2019 and has attempted to project itself as secular in character, despite its targeting of religious minorities in the Valley in the past.
This has been condemned by both Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. Following this regretful incident, there was a wreath-laying ceremony that was conducted at the district police lines of Anantnag.
There were also hundreds of people who attended the last rites of Qureshi in his own hometown.
The security forces of the state immediately took a serious step and started a crackdown in the Kashmir Valley area. It is related to the arrest of the people, who were suspected of being Over Ground Workers (OGWs) because of their logistic, financial and informational aid to terrorists without engaging in terrorist acts.
According to the official statistics, about 1,000 people were taken to prison for interrogation in order to avoid any further disruptions of terrorist organizations and their accomplices. According to the unofficial sources, the real figures of arrests reached 2,000 people.
For example, more than 700 people were detained in the district of Srinagar, and many other districts, such as Baramulla, Budgam, and Ganderbal, had their detainees too. The operation was believed to be well-informed and aimed at the destruction of all the infrastructure of terrorism in the region.
In addition to the above-mentioned dimension of the crackdown that occurred simultaneously but more visibly than the first one, the security forces demolished the houses of two active terrorists from LeT in the course of one night from Wednesday to Thursday.
The demolition of the house of the first terrorist took place in Guri village of Anantnag district, where the demolition was done in the house of Adil Ahmad Thokar (or Aadil Hussain Thokar as per some other sources). In a very interesting fashion, this is not the first time when the security forces have demolished any house related to the surname Thokar because the earlier house belonging to this surname had already been demolished due to the attack at Pahalgam Baisaran, and now the new construction at the same site has also been demolished.
Furthermore, the demolition of another house of a terrorist occurred in the Hassanpora Tawella village of Bijbehara. It should be pointed out that this house is of Haroon Rashid Ganai, whose father’s name is Abdul Rashid Ganai. From the data available in this context, it can be said that he has been working with LeT since 2018.
The government justified the demolition drives as being part of a comprehensive effort to destroy terror infrastructure networks, emphasizing that security agencies continue to focus on taking action against the networks supporting such anti-national activities in the area.
Officials highlighted another significant development regarding the trend of locals joining terrorism groups in Kashmir. As per officials, there have been no instances of locals joining the ranks of terrorists in the first seven months of 2026, indicating that counter-terror operations might have been successful to some extent. However, there are still a few locals who were recruited by the terrorists in the past and have been carrying out their activities in Kashmir.
The Anantnag attack brings into light the continued security concerns in south Kashmir despite years of counter-insurgency operations in the area. The attack was carried out at a time when the area is witnessing high-security presence because of the annual Amarnath Yatra pilgrimage. The size of the detention operation and demolition operations indicate the existing security philosophy of the region: reacting to terror incidents not just by arresting perpetrators but by destroying their network infrastructure as well.
