KISHTWAR (The Thursday Times) — Police in Indian-administered Kashmir have circulated posters of three wanted local terrorists and offered a Rs30 lakh reward for information about them, as troops comb the forests of Kishtwar district for the gunmen who killed two Special Police Officers this week.
The posters name Mohammad Amin, alias Jahangir; Riaz Ahmed, alias Hazari; and Mudassir Hussain. Police said the identity of anyone who comes forward would be kept secret. They describe Amin as a Hizbul Mujahideen commander who has been active since the 1990s and is regarded as the longest-surviving terrorist in Jammu and Kashmir.
The bodies of the two officers, Babi Chand, 57, and Rashpal Kumar, 45, were recovered from the Dachhan forest on Thursday, a day after they went missing on their way to an Army post. Both had gunshot wounds, and their service rifles, an INSAS and a .303, were gone. They were cremated in their home village of Kiyar on Friday with police honours. Police have not formally said who killed them, but security officials suspect a group of two or three terrorists hiding in the forest.
On Saturday, soldiers, police, and Village Defence Guards were searching the Dachhan–Marwah forest belt in an operation supervised by Kishtwar’s senior superintendent of police, Sunny Gupta.
Questions over the posting
Officials said the two men belonged to a four-member Special Operations Group post at Kiyar, which since last month had been sending two of its personnel at a time for week-long duty at a temporary base run by the Army’s Rashtriya Rifles at Dharna, in neighbouring Marwah tehsil. Reaching the base means a seven- to eight-hour trek over a mountain and through dense forest. One official said the pair came under fire near the ridge above Dharna and fired back, and that about 40 rounds were fired.
The deaths have raised questions over why personnel were sent from Kiyar at all, since Dharna has its own Special Operations Group unit. Special Police Officers are locally recruited auxiliaries who often guide larger units through terrain they know.
Shagun Parihar, the Bharatiya Janata Party MLA for Kishtwar, said someone had leaked information about the officers’ movements to the terrorists, and demanded that those responsible be identified and arrested. She also asked for 12 young men from the village to be recruited as Special Police Officers.
Sunil Sharma, the Leader of the Opposition in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly, who visited the families with Parihar, said Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha had agreed to their demands: financial help for the families, the return of a police post to Kiyar, a Special Operations Group camp near its forests, and an inquiry. Residents had grown angry when the bodies arrived, saying no senior police officer had come to the village.
Sinha said the two men had laid down their lives in the line of duty. “Their courage, unwavering dedication, and selfless service to the nation will always be remembered,” he said.
The killings came in the same week that gunmen wounded three Central Reserve Police Force personnel at a checkpoint in Kulgam, in the south of the Kashmir valley, where police have since detained hundreds of young men for questioning.
