A senior PDP leader says his party had conveyed to the BJP top brass that it would be difficult to save the coalition if Lal Singh and Ganga remained ministers. Another PDP leader says state intelligence agencies had also conveyed to the Centre that if no action was taken against the accused in Kathua case and those who rallied in their defence, “the insecure Gujjars, facing eviction from the forests, would get closer to Kashmiri separatists”. (Gujjar tribals in J&K are a large, varied set, differentiated by whether they are fully or semi-settled or pastoral nomadic, like the Bakarwals; the terms are often used interchangeably or together.) In fact, former army chief and MoS (External Affairs) V.K. Singh became the first prominent BJP leader to come out against the rapists when he tweeted, “We have failed (victim) as humans. ” As the army sees the Bakarwals as a second line of defence from militancy, the Centre grasped the larger fallout of defending the BJP ministers, and also its potential impact in the rest of the country after the chargesheet was presented in court despite obstruction by the Kathua lawyers. After resigning, however, both Lal Singh and Ganga laid the blame at the BJP’s door, saying it was their state party president, Sat Sharma, who had sent them to attend the March 1 rally. Both raised questions over the inquiry by the J&K Police’s Crime Branch and called for a CBI probe instead.