3 injured, including 2 cops, in grenade attack at bus stand in Jammu city

At least two policemen and a civilian were injured in a grenade attack by suspected terrorists at a bus stand in the heart of Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir, late on Thursday night.

An officer at Jammu Bus Stand police station said that unidentified terrorists hurled a grenade from a flyover around 11:15pm last night and escaped in a vehicle. A first information report has been lodged, he added.

The injured have been identified as selection grade constable Israr Shah, special police officer Arjun Kumar and Jagdev Raj of Billawar. They have been shifted to the Government Medical College and Hospital.

“I was strolling there on the BC Road when I heard a big explosion around 11:15pm. A police Gypsy was on a patrol. Initially, I thought that tyre of a vehicle might have burst but then I heard that it was a terror attack. People started running helter-skelter towards the bus stand to save themselves,” Raj Kumar, a waiter at a hotel in the bus stand, said.

This is the second terror attack in Jammu city after six soldiers and a civilian were killed in February this year in an attack on the Sunjuwan military station.

Experts said the terror attack in the heart of the city has not only exposed chinks in the security grid of the state police and other security forces as well intelligence agencies but also the deteriorating law and order situation in Jammu region.

“Lobbying grenade and escaping from the spot is a modus operandi of homegrown terrorists in the valley. The incident in Jammu clearly indicate that they are being helped by some moles in the security grid to reach to Jammu and carry out terror strikes,” Mahesh Kaul, a prominent research scholar, said.

The attack comes amidst unilateral ceasefire announced by the Union home ministry on the insistence of chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.

Jammu grappled with intense shelling by Pakistan army from May 15 to May 23 that has left a dozen dead and 56 injured in nine days. And, over one lakh people have been affected by the ceasefire violation.

The director general of the Border Security Force said on May 15 that a group of five suspected terrorists have probably infiltrated into the Hiranagar sector on May 13 through a trans-border tunnel and that the BSF will find and neutralise them soon.