3 J&K policemen and 8 relatives released unharmed by militants

Srinagar: After a three-day-long hostage drama, militants have released the relatives of Jammu and Kashmir policemen whom they had abducted from various places in south Kashmir.

The police confirmed on Friday night that militants have released three of its men and eight relatives of other policemen abducted from different parts of south Kashmir earlier this week. The end to the crisis came in reciprocation to the police releasing militants’ arrested relatives.

Late in the evening, Hizbul Mujahideen’s “operational commander” Riyaz Ahmad Naikoo, in a new audio released through social media, said that all the relatives of policemen abducted by its cadres have been released.

“We have let off all your relatives. They were picked up so that you realise the trauma of those families whose kith and kin are taken away from their mothers and families,” Naikoo said, while setting a three-day deadline for police to release relatives of militants and “innocent youth”.

Those who have been set free unharmed include sub-inspector Irfan Gulzar, special police officer (SPO) Javeed Ahmad Dar and constable Shabir Ahmad Zargar and other policemen’s relatives identified as Adnan Ashraf Shah, Faizan Bashir

Makroo, Zubair Ahmad Bhat, Ghulam Mohammad Dar, Arif Hussain Shanker, Asif Rafiq, Nasir Ahmad and Yasir Arfat Bhat

Meanwhile, unknown gunmen on Friday evening kidnapped the son of a CRPF official in Gadseer village in Bijbehara in Anantnag district.

The reports said that the masked gunmen barged inside the house of a CRPF man Farooq Ahmad Bhat at Gadseer and abducted his son Shariq Ahmad Bhat.

Over the past three days, suspected militants abducted as many as 11 family members of six policemen from different parts of south Kashmir. The police, however, confirmed only seven such kidnappings.

Reports from the area said that the masked men barged into the houses of these policemen in the district of Pulwama, Shopian, Anantnag and Kulgam and took their kin with them at gun point.

The authorities had  sounded high alert across the Kashmir Valley, the hotbed of militancy, after the abduction of civilians connected directly or indirectly with the local policemen. The police had last week in the wake of a series of attacks on policemen by militants said that it had devised a new strategy for the men in uniform wanting to visit their families during special occasions and emergencies.

The abduction of policemen’s kin took place amid reports of the police taking the father of top Hizb commander Naikoo into custody from his residence at Beigh Pora in Awantipore area of Pulwama district late Wednesday night. The officials said that Assadullah Naikoo, 70, had been detained for questioning and was allowed to go home on Friday.

The father and two brothers of another militant commander Lateef Ahmed alias Tiger were also detained during a nocturnal raid in their house in Pulwama’s Dogri Pora village. The family told reporters that Ahmed’s father Ghulam Hassan and his two brothers Zubair and Nadeem Ahmad were taken to an unknown place by the police.