J&K: State jams mobile services during R-Day

In an unprecedented security measure, mobile services were jammed in the entire state on Tuesday for nearly 10 hours following intelligence inputs of the possibility of cellphones being used by militants to engineer blasts on Republic Day, the Jammu police said.

The mobile services were jammed as a security measure in entire Jammu and Kashmir in view the intelligence reports of apprehension of use of mobiles for engineering blast on Republic Day in Jammu and Kashmir, a senior police official said.

The services of seven service providers -- BSNL, Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Indicom, Aircel, Idea and Reliance -- were jammed from 3 am to 1 pm in entire J&K today, he said.

However, landline phones continued functioning as usual in Jammu and Kashmir.

Intelligence agencies had warned that bomb fitted mobiles could be detonated through a phone call in a bid to disrupt celebrations on R-Day.

"The mobile services were restored after 1300 hours, when all the R-day functions had concluded in capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar besides the districts headquarters, where the Governor N N Vohra unfurled the Tri-colour," the official said.

The Centre had on January 21 lifted a ban on new pre-paid mobile connections in Jammu and Kashmir, issuing fresh guidelines for the telecom operators to limit the number of connections to a household.