The hawkish Mr Sinha
Anika Nazir
The chilling terror attack near Delhi’s Red Fort this week was handiwork of a young doctor from Pulwama who blew himself inside an i20. The terror attack has once again exposed a stark truth: Pakistan’s terror ecosystem no longer relies solely on guns or border infiltrations. It has long targeted minds, institutions, universities, and even the Indian government machinery itself. The explosion was not merely an act of terror; it was a reminder of a decades-long infiltration strategy designed to hollow India from within and bleed this nation with a thousand cuts.
Yet, there is another side to this story. The story of vigilance, foresight, and a quiet administrative and security revolution that began in 2020. Under the leadership of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, Jammu & Kashmir launched one of the most consequential internal security reforms in modern Indian governance: the systematic identification and dismissal of government employees found to be aiding, abetting, or participating in extremist activities. Sinha adopted a multifaceted security approach that was focussed on aggressive kinetic operations against terrorists and proactive and pre-emptive actions to eliminate threats.
As investigators unravel the Red Fort plot, one fact stands out: one of the doctors, Dr Nisar-ul-Hassan, had already been dismissed from J&K Government service in 2023 under Article 311(2)(c)-a constitutional tool invoked only for the gravest threats to national security. Had this mechanism not existed, and had Manoj Sinha not used it with uncompromising resolve, the consequences could have been unimaginably worse.
Since 2021, Jammu & Kashmir has dismissed over 82 government employees for terror links-an unprecedented operation in postIndependence India. It reached deep into universities, colleges, the law department, the police establishment, the education system, J&K Bank, and even senior bureaucratic ranks. Many dismissed individuals were long-term Pakistani investments: radical preachers disguised as state employees, ideological enablers, recruiters, logisticians, financial conduits, and institutional moles.
One such case was Dr Nighat Chiloo and Dr Bilal Ahmad dismissed for alleged involvement in the Shopian rape-murder case and working for terror outfits. Three other doctors and five lawyers were precious assets deployed by the terrorist-separatist networks to push their strategic agenda to a new level of violence in Kashmir valley. Others came from departments as varied as revenue, forestry, and health services. This formed part of Pakistan’s silent strategy not merely to spread terror, but to cultivate influence where it could quietly shape outcomes, disrupt governance, shape narrative and institutionalize radicalism. Manoj Sinha, perhaps more than any of his predecessors, understood the magnitude of this threat.
For decades, Pakistan’s strategy in Kashmir evolved from direct infiltration to intellectual infiltration. As border routes tightened and terrorist numbers declined, Islamabad adopted a more insidious doctrine: infiltrating the Indian state from within. Teachers, lecturers, technicians, clerks, and even police personnel became conduits-sometimes willingly, sometimes out of coercion-for the ideological apparatus Pakistan fed through its proxies.
By 2020, this infiltration had reached alarming depths. It was at this juncture that the Manoj Sinha launched an unprecedented, CID-driven internal audit of the state’s machinery. Behind every dismissal lay bulky dossiers highlighting their involvement in radical ecosystems.
The purge touched institutions once considered untouchable: Kashmir University, long rumoured to be a hub of ideological recruitment , The Law Department, where some individuals offered legal shields to separatist actors, J&K Police, where a few personnel were suspected of leaking sensitive movement details, Education Department, J&K Bank, where certain employees allegedly facilitated terror funding, The Health Department, where even educated professionals echoed extremist narratives.
Among them was Dr Nisar-ul-Hassan. That he was removed two years before the Red Fort incident is not administrative coincidence, it is evidence that systemic cleansing by Manoj Sinha worked. Had Dr Hassan remained within the government system, protected by the privileges of state employment, India might today be grappling with a far darker tragedy.
Much credit also goes to the transformation of the Jammu & Kashmir Police (JKP) By Manoj Sinha. Historically courageous but often structurally constrained, the force has undergone a silent metamorphosis under Sinha, from a politically pressured outfit to one of India’s most agile and modern forces.
Manoj Sinha had constituted a Special Task Force under top cop RR Swain to scrutinise employees for terror links, foreign funding, and ideological subversion. This was not a mechanical exercise but a forensic model of governance: cross-checking digital footprints, foreign contacts, encrypted activity, and behavioural patterns. If 2021 marked the beginning of the purge, the subsequent years marked the rebirth of the JKP. Today, national security circles acknowledge it as India’s most responsive counter-terrorism force. The Red Fort blast investigation-linking a doctor to a Faridabad-Kashmir-Pakistan ideological module demonstrates this new capability, a capability the JKP simply did not possess a decade ago.
One of Manoj Sinha’s most under-appreciated qualities is his granular understanding of security dynamics. He adopted Zero Tolerance Policy against terrorism with an aim to dismantle the entire terror ecosystem, including financial and ideological support structures of Pakistan-backed terror outfits. He is field-informed, updated on each village, each network, each pattern, each emerging threat. His hawkishness is not aggression-it is precision.
The Red Fort plot was cracked because the JKP could connect the bomber’s past affiliations with present behaviour supported by an administration clear in its mandate, free from political interference, and determined to defend the state’s institutional integrity. Today, the JKPstands stronger not because it has more weapons, but because it has more autonomy, discipline, and clarity, the qualities it often lacked before the abrogation of Article 370.
The loss of innocent lives in the Red Fort blast is a national wound. Families who expected nothing more than an ordinary evening were pushed into a valley of grief. Their pain is immeasurable. But their tragedy must become India’s memory a stark reminder that complacency fuels extremism.
Pakistan does not merely export violence; it invests in narratives, recruits through grievances, and penetrates through institutions. Its long war against India is waged not only on borders but within universities, offices, hospitals, and digital spaces fought by individuals drawing salaries from the Indian state while serving adversarial interests. This is the invisible war. The Red Fort tragedy is its latest scar. Manoj Sinha is not flamboyant. He does not dominate headlines. His leadership is quiet, almost austere. Yet behind this humility lies a razor-sharp administrative mind which understands that national security is not just about responding to attacks, it is about pre-empting them. Through his decisions, he has: dismantled entrenched ideological networks, reversed decades of institutional compromise, strengthened the UTpolice, kept political interference at bay, and created a climate where accountability is intrinsic.
India has long celebrated generals and intelligence chiefs. But in Jammu Kashmir today, one of the most consequential counter-terror strategists is seated not in an intelligence agency, but in the Raj Bhavan.
The dismissal of 82 employees was not bureaucratic purge; it was national preservation. It safeguarded institutions Pakistan hoped to hollow out. It prevented the state from becoming complicit in its own destabilisation. Years from now, Kashmir’s historical memory may look back at this period as the moment India finally recognised infiltration as a tangible reality-and the moment governance learned to defend itself.
The Red Fort explosion is a tragedy, but also a warning. And within that warning lies proof that India’s administrative resistance is working, that vigilance has saved more lives than we will ever know. For this, the nation owes recognition to the man who understood the stakes long before most others did: Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, the hawkish reformer, who chose to clean system others were content to tolerate.
(The author is a Srinagar-based political commentator and social activist)
(Courtesy: Times Of India)
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