India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) charged 19 people, including seven Pakistani nationals, on Tuesday over a deadly bomb attack on a security convoy in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir last year.
The bombing on Feb 14, 2019, had killed 40 paramilitary policemen, leading to aerial clashes between India and Pakistan. Jaish-e-Mohammad had claimed responsibility for the attack.
On Monday, the NIA said four of the seven Pakistani nationals charged in the attack were at large, while the other three had been killed in separate clashes with security forces. “The charge sheet has brought on record the all-out involvement of Pakistan-based entities (in) carry(ing) out terrorist strikes in India and to incite and provoke Kashmiri youth,” an NIA statement said. The other 12 accused are local residents of IIOJK, some of whom have been killed in clashes, some arrested with the rest missing.
One of the accused, a 20-year-old man from Srinagar, ordered 4 kilograms of aluminium powder on Amazon to help his accomplices make explosives used in the attack, according to the NIA.
India has long accused Pakistan of harbouring militants and supporting fight for independence in Muslim-majority Kashmir. Pakistan has denied the accusations. Two of the three wars between India and Pakistan have been fought over Kashmir.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government tightened its grip on Kashmir last August when it stripped away its special status that allowed it to make some of its own laws. The decision, the most far-reaching political move in one of the world’s most militarised regions in nearly
seven decades, polarised opinion with Kashmiri leaders calling it aggression against the state’s people.
