Muskan Thakur
Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 18: In the aftermath of a major clearance drive in Jammu’s Narwal locality, Rohingya families who had lived there for nearly two decades have gone into near-total silence — a quiet that security officials interpret as the first move in a carefully planned dispersal.
Having fully absorbed local language, dress and customs over 18 years, these groups are now exploring new shelters, first within Jammu and Kashmir and, if needed, in distant cities across northern and southern India. The prospect of their scattering in small, hard-to-trace clusters has triggered alerts in multiple districts and three states, turning what was once a contained settlement into a complex security headache.
The families, many of whom settled in Jammu around 2008, had for years operated from a concentrated pocket in Narwal, running small shops and living in makeshift dwellings. That concentration made monitoring relatively manageable. The recent eviction, which removed both shanties and commercial structures, has shattered that pattern.
Instead of public protests or visible relocation, the community has chosen strategic silence. Officials describe the hush as deliberate: a way to buy time, avoid further police attention, and quietly test options before any large-scale movement becomes visible.
According to ground-level accounts, the immediate priority is internal. Several families are att In the aftermath of a major clearance drive in Jammu’s Narwal locality, Rohingya families who had lived there for nearly two decades have gone into near-total silence.
Having fully absorbed local language, dress and customs over 18 years, these groups are now exploring new shelters, first within J&K.
If needed, in distant cities across northern and southern India. The prospect of their scattering in small, hard-to-trace clusters has triggered alerts in multiple districts.
Three states, turning what was once a contained settlement into a complex security headache.
The security implications have prompted a rapid widening of the surveillance net. Within Jammu and Kashmir, authorities in Udhampur, Kathua, Reasi, Poonch and Rajouri have been placed on heightened alert for any unusual inward movement.
Simultaneously, agencies in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi have been warned about the possibility of cross-state travel. The concern is not merely about numbers but about method. Because many of these individuals now speak the local dialect fluently, dress in regional attire and understand everyday social codes, conventional markers used to track migrant groups are far less effective.
What was once a single, visible cluster has the potential to dissolve into numerous small groups spread across urban and semi-urban locations hundreds of kilometres apart.
Officials acknowledge that reconstructing travel histories and identifying new safe houses will be significantly harder under these conditions. The combination of linguistic and cultural assimilation with a conscious strategy of silence and staggered movement raises the risk that some families could settle unnoticed for extended periods. For agencies tasked with monitoring such populations, the shift from a fixed locality to a fluid, multi-state footprint represents a clear escalation in the challenge of maintaining visibility and control. |
