The terror attack on the Indian Army’s 166 Field Regiment camp in Nagrota on 29 November 2016 was more than a violent breach of a military installation.
Unbroken Chain of Pakistan’s Proxy Terror
The terror attack on the Indian Army’s 166 Field Regiment camp in Nagrota on 29 November 2016 was more than a violent breach of a military installation. It was a calculated operation that exposed, once again, Pakistan’s deliberate use of cross-border terror as an extension of state strategy. The three Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who infiltrated the camp before dawn did not act alone, and they certainly did not act without direction. Their movements, their training and their targets all pointed unmistakably to a larger command guiding them from across the border.
The terrorists entered the camp wearing police uniforms, signalling a degree of preparation common to Pakistan-backed fidayeen units. Within minutes, they pushed deep into the residential area of the camp, where officers and their families lived. Their intention was not only to inflict casualties but to create a hostage-style crisis that would dominate national attention. Seven soldiers were killed, including young officers who fought to prevent the terrorists from reaching more families trapped inside.
The subsequent investigation by the National Investigation Agency left little doubt about the origins of the attack. In its 2018 chargesheet, the NIA identified Maulana Abdul Rouf Asgar, the deputy chief of JeM and brother of Masood Azhar, as the mastermind behind the strike. Asgar has been involved in several major terror operations against India, and his role in Nagrota underscored that JeM’s leadership continues to plan and direct attacks from safe havens inside Pakistan.
Investigators established that the terrorists crossed the international border sector, not the Line of Control, and moved through a network of over-ground workers in Jammu who provided shelter, transportation and reconnaissance support. The sophistication of the movement showed that this was not a spontaneous act but part of a sustained cross-border infrastructure that Pakistan has maintained for years under different names and fronts.
Nagrota also needs to be understood in the context of the moment it occurred. The attack came barely two months after India’s surgical strikes across the LoC in response to the Uri attack. Those strikes broke Pakistan’s long-held assumption that India would not retaliate across the border. In the weeks that followed, Pakistan’s military establishment faced diplomatic pressure and narrative damage. Nagrota was a way to claw back some of that lost ground. By striking inside Jammu, Pakistan sought to demonstrate that its proxy network remained unshaken.
The timing was not accidental. Terror attacks like Parliament in 2001, Mumbai in 2008, Uri in 2016 and Pulwama in 2019 all emerged in periods when Pakistan was under varying degrees of pressure, both domestically and internationally. Nagrota fits that pattern. It was a reminder that JeM remains a tool of Pakistan’s security apparatus — an instrument that can be activated when strategic tensions rise or when Pakistan seeks to influence the temperature along the LoC and within Jammu and Kashmir.
India prevented the attack from turning into the prolonged crisis it was designed to become. The swift response of the Army ensured families were rescued and the terrorists neutralised. But the larger lesson Nagrota delivered was stark: as long as Pakistan continues to shelter JeM’s leadership, allow its training networks to regenerate and provide operational space for its cadres, such attacks will not disappear.
Nagrota was not merely a terror strike. It was a message. And India cannot afford to ignore what that message revealed.
(Aritra Banerjee is a columnist specialising in Defence, Strategic Affairs, and Indo-Pacific geopolitics. He is the co-author of The Indian Navy @75: Reminiscing the Voyage. Having spent his formative years in the United States before returning to India, he brings a global outlook and first-hand insight to his reporting from foreign assignments and internal security environments such as Kashmir. He holds a Master’s in International Relations, Security & Strategy from O.P. Jindal Global University, a Bachelor’s in Mass Media from the University of Mumbai, and Professional Education in Strategic Communications from King’s College London (King’s Institute for Applied Security Studies).
