A 70-year-old assailant breached Z+ security to fire a shot at the National Conference patriarch, sparking questions over a massive police lapse.

The bullet was meant for Farooq Abdullah. It didn’t find him.

On Wednesday night, the veteran National Conference leader and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister stood outside a marriage hall in Jammu’s posh Greater Kailash locality. He was there to celebrate the wedding of party leader B.S. Chouhan’s son. He left with a ringing in his ears and a gunman in the dirt.

Kamal Singh Jamwal, a 70-year-old resident of Purani Mandi, was waiting. He didn’t look like a ghost or a professional hitman. He looked like an old man in the crowd. But as Abdullah stepped out with Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary and Advisor Nasir Aslam Wani, Jamwal drew a licensed pistol and pulled the trigger.

He got within point-blank range.

One shot was fired before the world collapsed on him. Two police officers—an inspector and a sub-inspector from the security wing—overpowered Jamwal, wrestling the weapon away as the smell of cordite filled the air. Abdullah and his colleagues escaped unhurt, but the vacuum where the security should have been remains.

“Allah is kind,” Chief Minister Omar Abdullah posted on X shortly after. “My father had a very close shave… a man with a loaded pistol was able to get within point-blank range and discharge a shot.”

The questions are already piling up like winter snow in the Valley. How does a man with a loaded firearm get within arm’s length of a Z+ NSG-protected former Chief Minister? Where was the local police presence?

Deputy CM Surinder Choudhary wasn’t interested in the official line. He called it what it was: a massive security failure.

“There was no one from the local police there,” Choudhary told reporters at the scene. “One should ask the police how such a big lapse happened. This is a very big security lapse.”

The police are already doing what police do—downplaying the intent while holding the body. Initial official statements claim there is “no terror angle” and suggest Jamwal was in an inebriated state. They are leaning on the “disgruntled local” narrative, noting that the weapon used was licensed.

But a licensed gun kills just as effectively as an illegal one.

Jamwal is currently being interrogated at an undisclosed location. Investigators are combing through his background in Purani Mandi, looking for a motive that goes beyond a drunken impulse. You don’t just “stumble” into a Z+ security detail and fire a shot at the most recognizable face in Kashmiri politics because you had one too many at a wedding.

The optics are devastating for the Jammu police. In a region where security is supposed to be an airtight drum, the drum just leaked. Greater Kailash is not a back alley; it is a high-profile neighborhood. The event was attended by the top brass of the current administration.

Omar Abdullah isn’t letting it slide. He’s demanding to know how the “close protection team” became the last line of defense instead of the first. If the security wing hadn’t moved in a heartbeat, the headline today would be an obituary.

For now, the National Conference patriarch is back home. The gates are shut. The guards are awake. But the silence from the police leadership regarding the missing local cordons is deafening.

They say God protects the brave, but in Jammu, it seems the security detail is currently the only thing standing between a veteran statesman and a 70-year-old with a grudge.

The investigation continues, but the trust is already broken.