Over 250 former militants from Jammu and Kashmir are waiting to enter India from Nepal after security agencies prepared new procedures for crossing the border against the backdrop of a controversy over the arrest of a suspected militant on the frontier.
Sources said close to 200 people, including militants and their families, have already crossed over to India in the last few months through official check posts of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), which guards the 1,751-km border.
The force has also deputed specially chosen personnel, hailing from the state and conversant with the Kashmiri language, to man these locations where the ex-militants reach for crossing over to the Indian soil.
The issue came to the light after the row over the arrest of Syed Liyaqat Shah by the Delhi Police on suspicion of being a Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist while Jammu and Kashmir Police claimed he was on his way to surrender in March this year.
The Union Home Ministry had sometime back institutionalised procedures to be followed for using the Nepal route for surrendering of Kashmiri youths who had crossed over to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir in 1990s.
"The Jammu and Kashmir government (state CID) has validated a list of such people and shared it with the Union government (Home Ministry). The SSB, by virtue of guarding that border, is the nodal authority to receive such people coming from Nepal to JK police," a senior official said.
SSB chief Arun Chaudhary, during an interaction with journalists before the 50th Raising Day celebrations of the force, refused to give details about the procedures adopted on this open border in this regard.
"I can just say that this is a friendly border but we have seen in the last few years that some elements have started exploiting the frontier to carry out their nefarious designs in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. We are always alert," the SSB Director General (DG) said.
