The Kashmir Zone Police had issued an advisory to the heads of all Central Reserve Police Force units in the Valley on February 8, warning them of possible use of improvised explosive devices by militants. The police had asked the CRPF to sanitise the areas of deployment before occupying them. However, a police officer, while confirming the input, said it was not specific.

The advisory came less than a week before at least 40 CRPF personnel were killed when a militant drove an explosive-laden vehicle into a bus in Pulwama district on Thursday. The Jaish-e-Mohammed extremist group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Soon after the incident, India demanded that Pakistan stop allowing terror groups to operate from its territory. It also urged the United Nations to list Jaish-e-Mohammed’s chief Masood Azhar as a designated terrorist.

Many countries condemned the attack, and the United States demanded that Pakistan stop providing safe havens to terrorists. However, Islamabad denied that it had anything to do with the incident.

India on Friday withdrew the Most Favoured Nation status it had granted to Pakistan. The decision to withdraw it for Pakistan was taken at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told media persons that the government will take all diplomatic steps to ensure Pakistan is globally isolated.

Modi told an audience at the inauguration of the Vande Bharat Express in New Delhi that terrorist organisations which carried out the attack, and their backers, had committed a “very grave mistake”. He said the Army has been given a free hand.