Authorities on Saturday demolished the house of a designated Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militant, Ashiq Nengroo, allegedly built on encroached government land at the New colony in Jammu & Kashmir's 2019 Pulwama district. It’s for the first time that the authorities in Kashmir demolished a house of any militant.
Nengroo is a wanted JeM commander and an accused in the 2019 Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed. In April this year, the Central government declared the JeM commander as a "designated terrorist" under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Nengroo has been involved in the infiltration of terrorists into J&K and has also been responsible for perpetrating various terror incidents in the Union Territory. "He is running a terror syndicate in Kashmir and is now "engaged in a perilous campaign to orchestrate terror in Jammu and Kashmir", remote controlled from Pakistan," the ministry said in its official release.
Nengroo's two-storey house at New Colony in Rajpora was demolished by the district administration in the presence of police, officials. The demolition was opposed by the militant outfit The Resistance Front (TRF), and officials carrying out the demolition work were threatened with dire consequences. A crane was used to demolish the house. Officials of the district and security forces accompanied the demolish team.
Police officials, however, downplayed the threats issued by the shadow outfit of the JeM, saying this was a desperate attempt by the terrorists who had been cornered.