The savage killing ... falls into a sinister pattern. Over the past year militants owing allegiance to Pakistan ... have shifted their operations to Muslim majority areas outside the Valley, especially in the districts of Doda and Udhampur. The short-term objective could be to emphasise their frightening presence and strike-power ... through mass murder of chosen soft targets. A more scary objective, something that both the State and the Central Governments can ignore only at their peril, could be to frighten the minority Hindus out of these areas as had been done in the Kashmir Valley ..

Pakistani patrons may be calculating on bloody communal riots as a follow-up to their heinous act and expecting reprisal attacks by the minority community. The lives of Muslims in J&K are not a concern for Pakistan which is engaging this country in a cheap and effective proxy war. It has to be fought as such with ruthless efficiency and determination. There is no need for 'hot pursuit' but every need to trace and punish the killers ... What these champions of barbarity are threatening is not so much the lives of the Kashmiris as its centuries-old tradition of secularism and communal harmony. Every militant killing in J&K is a big question mark on the rationale and legitimacy of the Indian State.