J&K: To Evade Blame For Supporting Terrorism In India, Pakistan Supplying Chinese Grenades To Terrorists

An assessment by Indian agencies conducting counter-insurgency (CI) operations has concluded that Pakistan is supplying Chinese-made grenades and sophisticated ammunition in large quantities to terror outfits in the Kashmir valley in order to evade the blame for conducting subversive activities in India, reports Hindustan Times.

As per an internal document accessed by the daily, as many as 70 Chinese grenades (64 in 2018 and six so far in 2019) have been seized by security forces in Jammu and Kashmir since 1 January last year.

The document reportedly revealed recovery of Chinese origin pistols, armour piercing incendiary (API) shells and tracer rounds from terrorists belonging to various terror outfits.

“The API includes both mild steel core and hard steel core (which can pierce bulletproof jackets used by Indian security forces) and its use brings a new dimension of threat for the security forces,” the document stated, as reported by HT.

As per the report, apart from seizures the security agencies have also documented a dozen incidents in past 15 months where either trained terrorists or over-ground workers (OGW) of terror outfits lobbed grenades at patrol parties, bunkers, vehicles or camps of the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir.

“These attacks had a mix of both grenades made in China and Pakistan, but there is a sudden spurt in the use of Chinese ones,” an Indian Police Service officer involved in CI operations was quoted in the report as saying.

The officer, explaining the trend, said that Pakistan Army markings on grenades manufactured in that country was exposing its role in spreading terrorism in the international community.

“Now, it uses its agencies and terror groups to smuggle ammunition of Chinese origin, which do not have any Chinese ordnance markings. These are low-intensity but still a grenade causes more damage than a bullet,” the officer said.

“The main purpose of using Chinese grenades is that Pakistan doesn’t want any weapons used in Jammu and Kashmir to be traced back to it,” added the officer.