Militants desperate to infiltrate from across LoC: Army

JAMMU: With infiltration bids from across the LoC showing a substantial decline, militants are now adopting a new tactic of recruiting locals, an army official today said.

Col SD Goswami, PRO Defence, Northern Command said the militants so far were using traditional infiltration routes but they are looking into some other areas for sneaking into India.

"Seeing that infiltration is not really taking place and that the number of militants is dwindling, they have started new tactics of trying to recruit locals," he said.

He also said that social media and its blatant use by terrorists groups and separatists alike is emerging as a challenge from the security point of view.

"The security situation of J&K is at an important cross road of transcending from conflict stabilisation to conflict resolution domain," he said.

"The other areas are being monitored by ground sensors, thermal imagers and battle field surveillance radars.

Surveillance devices provide signatures of the movement of terrorists in real time and enable troops to take appropriate action," he said.

According to Colonel Goswami, infiltration attempts have shown a decline from 221 in 2014 to 92 in 2015. In 2011, there were 247 infiltration attempts, followed by 264 in 2012 and 277 in 2013.

He said that 13 infiltrating terrorists were killed in 2012, followed by 38 in 2013, 52 in 2014 and 37 in 2015.