The TRF used body cameras like the GoPro to shoot attacks on the CRPF and the Army in Kashmir, which they used to “motivate” their recruits, say officials. The faceless and tech savvy organisation took to the social media to propagate its messages. Unlike Hizbul Mujahideen’s 'poster boy commander' Burhan Wani, who galvanised youth support for an armed insurgency only to be killed in a gunfight in 2016 in south Kashmir, the TRF is against uploading the pictures of its cadre online or revealing the command chain. It was not just the nomenclature, the TRF’s operational style and recruiting were also different. “The name TRF was an attempt to secularise the idea of jihad to present the Kashmir insurgency as a political cause rather than a religious war as was manifested by the names such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM),” a senior police officer said. The nomenclature of the outfit was a departure from the past when militant groups’ names would have obvious Islamic references. All the five slain militants remain unidentified till date. It was the newly-formed TRF's first attack in Kashmir. Five soldiers, including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), lost their lives. The “well-trained” and “motivated” militants were killed only after the Army’s elite troops launched a gun battle that lasted for days.

The TRF's name first surfaced after a four-day gun battle was reported near the Line of Control (LoC) in Kupwara's Keran Sector, starting April 1, 2020.Īccording to police records, five infiltrators from the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) surprised the security personnel by holding on to an inaccessible area of Keran for more than five days in well-accumulated snow. The outfit was born nine months after the Union government ended Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status on August 5, 2019. Security agencies warn that attacks could intensify it in the coming days.

A little-known militant outfit called the Resistance Front (TRF) has claimed responsibility for the killings. The killings of seven civilians in six days, including a well-known chemist, Makhan Lal Pandita, and a school principal, Supinder Kaur, have shaken the Kashmir Valley.

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