New Delhi, July 8
The trail of ongoing series of stone-pelting incidents in Jammu and Kashmir is being traced to persons based in Pakistan and also hardline instigators based here, intercepts by intelligence agencies have indicated. Separately, the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram made it clear that the Army will be in Kashmir “as long as it is necessary” to deal with the situation there.

Chidambaram’s was briefed by the Union Home Secretary GK Pillai, who had visited Kashmir yesterday. This morning Chidambaram told reporters that the purpose of moving in the Army was to “serve as a deterrent…Army has been kept ready in case it becomes necessary to deploy it…….But I sincerely hope that it will not be necessary for too long.”

On the involvement of hardline separatists in engineering some of the violence in the Kashmir valley, sources said the home ministry has been supplied with transcripts showing two persons discussing about a procession near Srinagar yesterday.

As per sources, two office-bearers of the hardline Hurriyat faction led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani discussed how to “create casualties”. According to sources, one Ghulam Ahmed Dar was heard telling Shabir Ahmed Wani, another office-bearer, that a procession of nearly 20,000 people had started. Wani told Dar, "You guys enjoy payments sitting at home and do nothing." Dar, in his response, says, "the management of crowd becomes difficult later.....It gets difficult to manage the mob later." Dar then ends up by saying, "At least 15 people should be martyred today", source said while quoting from the transcript.

Luckily the police dispersed the procession with a mild cane charge and no untoward incident took place.

Most of the stone-pelting is being attributed to the disgruntled elements out to de-rail the Indo-Pak peace process. Boys are being paid up to Rs 300 for each incident of stone -pelting and the money is transferred using a popular money transfer agency via the Gulf.

Last week the Home Minister had made a categorical statement saying the Lashkar-e-Toiba was instigating people in the valley.

Official sources said the thinking in the government was that once normalcy is restored all shades of opinion could be invited for a dialogue to evolve a political solution. During the interaction of the Home Secretary state government officials have been told to crack down and no one involved in violence or mischief should be spared. They state has been asked to register specific FIR’s against stone-pelters. The state government must be seen taking action, said sources.

Earlier, in the day the Home Minister said the Jammu and Kashmir government requested for deployment of Army. The curfew is in place only for a couple of days.