Last Updated on October 10, 2021 at 7:02 pm
After the spike up of killing of minorities in Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir Police’s elite anti-terrorism unit Special Operations Group (SOG) has got a full-time Superintendent of Police to head it. The appointment of Iftikhar Talib as SP (PC) Police Component to head the elite unit this week has been made. The group has got it after the gap of five months.
The SOG is also known as the Special Task Force and is more of a volunteer force drawn from the regular J&K Police and has over 1,000 personnel who work to carry out operations.
The last SP who moved to another position was in May this year. Talib has been a part of SOG earlier in other capacities and is experienced in anti-terror operations. But to an utter shock, unit had not put up full-time SP to lead the operations for nearly five months.
Since then, the Cargo was being handled as an additional charge by another officer. But the appointment of a full time SP is important for the coordinated and smoother work. As per report in The Print, it has been argued that terrorists have managed to carry out the attacks in Srinagar because of a sense of normalcy that had crept in. For keeping a control on terror incidents one way is to get specific inputs of the presence of a terrorist in an area so that the terrorist is neutralized. The other stands to conduct search operations which can create pressure and terrorist are never settled and are on the move.
Operationally, Cargo, a name drawn from the building that once housed the Indian Airlines cargo in Srinagar, comes directly under the Inspector General of Police in J&K who reports to the Director General of Police. The Cargo unit is divided into special teams which cater various aspects of the anti-terror operations. In every district of the state, the SOG is headed by deputy superintendent of police (operations), but their headquarter is ‘Cargo’.
