Centre declares Lashkar’s offshoot ’The Resistance Front’ a terrorist organisation

The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has been declared a terrorist organisation and banned by the Indian government. 

The Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday released a notification stating TRF was banned under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for terror activities, including recruitment and infiltration of terrorists from across the border into the union territory of Jammu & Kashmir. 

“TRF is recruiting youth through online medium for furtherance of terrorist activities and has been also involved in carrying out propaganda on terror activities, recruitment of terrorists, infiltration of terrorists and smuggling of weapons and narcotics from Pakistan into J&K," read the notification. 

The notification added that TRF's activities were detrimental to India's security. 

“The activities of the TRF are detrimental for the security and sovereignty of India. A large number of cases have been registered against the members/associates of the TRF relating to planning of killing of security personnel and civilians of J&K, co-coordinating and transporting weapons to support proscribed terrorist organisations."

The terror outfit has gained notoriety in recent times for undertaking the brutal killings of Kashmiri Pandits, migrants and security forces in J&K. 

Ever since India abrogated the controversial Article 370, the funding routes of most terror outfits have dried up. With the UT more homogeneously assimilated with the rest of India, the terror outfits like TRF are attempting to recreate the chaos of 1989 when Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of their homes in a mass exodus. 

Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammad have been alleged to have concocted the name of the banned terror outfit. Resistance was added in the name to provide credence in global politics, according to experts related to the matter. 

The outfit was established to ensure that Pakistan did not face the heat from international agencies such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which scrutinised it for involvement in terror activities. TRF allowed Jaish and LeT to pull the strings whilst maintaining plausible deniability. 

According to data released by the J&K Police, the most number of terrorists (108) to be killed in 2022 in the valley were from TRF. 

“During the year 2022, a total of 93 successful encounters took place in Kashmir in which 172 terrorists, including 42 foreign terrorists, were neutralised. Maximum terrorists neutralised were from LeT/TRF (108) outfit followed by JeM (35), HM (22), Al-Badr (4) and AGuH (3) outfits,” said Vijay Kumar, ADGP, Kashmir Police. (wionews)