Just like every day, on June 9, 49-year-old Amarjeet Sharma of Kathua district in Jammu returned home from his shop late in the evening.
Sharma’s house is on the edge of Mela village – among the last habitations before a forested area begins.
“After changing his clothes, he went towards the forest to relieve himself and also check on our cattle,” recalled his wife Manju Sharma. “This was his habit for the last 40 years.”
But that night, Sharma did not return. “After 15 minutes or so, I called his phone three times but he didn’t answer,” recalled Manju. “After that, we started looking for him with the help of our neighbours.”
Some 200 metres from his home, towards the forest, the villagers and his family members saw Sharma lying prone on the ground. “We initially thought he must have fainted, but when we turned his body towards us, there was a long gash on his neck,” Manju said. “His throat had been slit.”
Sharma ran a chemist shop in the village and was locally popular as ‘doctor’. “He didn’t have any animosity with anyone,” said Manju, who has two children.
While Kathua police registered a murder case against unknown persons in Hiranagar police station, that was not enough to assuage the family.
The next morning, hundreds of local residents, carrying Sharma’s body, blocked the Jammu-Pathankot highway and a railway track in Hiranagar, demanding the arrest of the killers.
“The entire village is rattled,” said a neighbour of Sharma, asking not to be identified.
A gunfight breaks out
Less than two days after Sharma’s murder, two militants surfaced in the nearby Sohal village of Kathua’s Hiranagar area, seeking water from the local residents.
According to villagers, if you walk through the forest, Sohal and Mela, where Sharma’s murder took place, are not more than 3 km from each other.
“They emerged from the forested area around 7.45 in the evening and asked for water,” recalled Mast Ram, a former panch of the village. “It was obvious from their appearance that they were militants. That’s why many villagers went inside, locked their houses and ran for safety.”
As chaos spread through the village, the militants realised they had been exposed and opened fire, injuring a civilian.
Soon after, the security forces rushed to the village and cordoned it off.
In the ensuing encounter, both the militants, believed to be from Pakistan, were gunned down by the afternoon of June 12. A trooper of the Central Reserve Police Force was also killed in the gun battle.
According to the residents of Sohal village, this is the first time an encounter had taken place in the area since the eruption of militancy in Kashmir Valley in 1989. “Even during the late 1990s, when militancy had spread to Doda and Udhampur, we didn’t experience any such encounter with the militants,” said Mast Ram.
Jammu in line of fire
Militancy in Kashmir has been on the backfoot following a widespread crackdown by New Delhi in the aftermath of August, 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its special status.
But over the last few years, the focus of militants appears to have shifted – to Jammu.
Since 2021, militants have carried out multiple precision strikes and ambushes on security forces, leaving dozens of soldiers dead in Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu’s Pir Panjal region along the Line of Control.
But encounters in Kathua district in the last two months – as well as militant strikes in Jammu’s Doda and Reasi districts – signal another shift.
On June 9, the day Narendra Modi took oath as Prime Minister for the third time, militants targeted a bus of pilgrims in Jammu’s Reasi district, leaving nine dead and more than 30 injured. This was the first time in two decades that such an incident had taken place in the district.
Over the past several months, the militants, who are largely believed to be well-trained Pakistani infiltrators, have infiltrated deeper into the Jammu division of the Union territory – even striking in Doda, which is far away from the international border with Pakistan.
Worryingly, in most of the incidents, the militants have managed to give the forces the slip after carrying out an attack.
As Scroll travelled to Kathua and Reasi districts, we found civilians on edge even as the security establishment grapples with a new turn in militancy in Jammu and Kashmir.
Who killed Amarjeet?
While Sharma’s family was grappling with their loss, the encounter in the neighbouring Sohal village immediately after his murder aroused their suspicions.
“It seems that my brother saw someone who was guiding the militants in the forest area,” claimed Ram Gopal Sharma, the brother of Amarjeet Sharma, echoing a theory popular in the village. “Since his cover was blown, he might have asked the militants to kill Sharma so that his identity remains concealed.”
The Kathua police said they are still awaiting Sharma’s autopsy report and forensic reports of the weapons recovered from the militants killed in Sohal village.
“Most likely, both the incidents [Sharma’s murder and militants killed in Sohal] are connected but at this time, nothing can be said conclusively,” said a senior police official in Kathua, declining to be identified. “The investigation is ongoing.”
‘Atmosphere of uncertainty’
The growing incidents of militant violence in Jammu have unnerved people across the region.
“There is uncertainty in the air. People get inside their homes before the sunset,” shared Mast Ram, the former panch of Sohal village. “Even if there is a sound of firecrackers nearby during the day, people panic and lock up their gates.”
Given the spread of militant attacks to those areas where there was no sign of militancy for decades, many in far-flung rural areas of Jammu are demanding the government provide them weapons in order to defend themselves.
Jammu and Kashmir already has one such policy in place. In 1995, the Union government had set up village defence groups in Jammu and Kashmir to arm civilians in the remote, mountainous districts of Jammu, where the security forces found difficult to reach quickly during militant attacks.
In August 2022, the Union government announced a new Village Defence Guard scheme, which increased the honorarium paid to the members of the village defence committee to Rs 4,000-Rs 4,500.
According to official figures, the total number of village defence groups in Jammu and Kashmir was 4,248 in 2016. Nearly 28,000 volunteers, including ex-servicemen, were part of these groups.
After the attacks on civilians, there is a demand for guns in Kathia and the adjoining Samba district, which also shares a border with Pakistan.
Darshan Sharma, a local resident of Samba’s Ratwana panchayat, told Scroll that villagers have already provided a list of 50 volunteers to the police authorities. “It’s better if we have some defence. At least, we can retaliate or engage militants until the security forces come,” Sharma pointed out.
However, not everyone backs the idea of arming civilians. “In my view, the government should set up army units in the midst of these forest areas so that the militants stay away,” said Ram Gopal Sharma, the brother of Amarjeet Sharma, who is a soldier himself.
For now, Sharma’s concerns are different. “I am worried about my nephew, niece and sister-in-law. Who will take care of them?” he asked.
Recently, Sharma wrote to the Jammu and Kashmir lieutenant general’s office and the Union home ministry, asking for his brother’s death to be recognised as caused by a militant attack.
“We want the government to declare that my brother was killed by militants and his family should be accordingly compensated,” Sharma demanded.
He also pleaded with the government to sponsor the education of Sharma's 12-year-old daughter. “His son should get a job and the government should transfer the license of my brother’s pharmacy to his wife’s name.”
All images by Safwat Zargar.
