Srinagar: Two Jammu and Kashmir policemen deputed for the security of slain BJP state secretary Anil Parihar were on Friday taken into custody by police for questioning.
The BJP leader was along with his elder brother Ajeet Parihar gunned down by unidentified assailants in the State’s Kishtwar town on Thursday night.
Confirming the BJP leader’s two PSOs Om Prakash and Sahil Kumar have been taken into custody for questioning, the police officials said that they were not accompanying him when he and his brother were attacked. The policemen were detained from their respective houses early Friday and immediately taken for interrogation, the officials said.
The killing of the BJP leader and his brother triggered protests by his supporters in Kishtwar and its neighbourhood. Amid rising tensions and after attacks on two senior police officers by an irate crowd at a local hospital the authorities imposed indefinite curfew on Kishtwar, 214-km northeast of winter capital Jammu from Thursday night itself. The curfew was extended to two neighbouring towns of Doda and Bhaderwah on Friday morning.
In Kishtwar, the Army was called out to stage a flag march, reports said. Earlier immediately after the incident, the police and paramilitary reinforcements had been fanned out in all the three towns of the Chenab valley whereas the security was beefed up elsewhere in the Jammu region following protests against the murder of the BJP leader and his brother.
The officials said that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been constituted by the police to probe the incident. The SIT headed by Assistant Superintendent of Police Prabeet Singh has been asked to crack the case at earliest, they added.
Kishtwar’s Deputy Commissioner Angrez Singh Rana told this newspaper over the phone, “The curfew was imposed in Kishtwar as a precautionary measure. After the cremation of the brother duo, people took out a procession to denounce the brutal murder but everything went off peacefully. The situation is well under control.”
