Kashmir: Deputy SP, Army jawan, 3 JeM militants die in encounter

Srinagar: Three militants, a deputy superintendent of Police (DSP) and an Army jawan were killed and two Army officers wounded in a gunfight in Turigam village of Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Kulgam district on Sunday.

The police said that the identities of the slain militants are being ascertained but local sources said that they belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the terror group involved in the February 14 suicide attack on a convoy of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in J&K’s Pulwama district, leaving over 40 jawans killed and several others injured.

Police officials said that DSP of the counterinsurgency special operations group (SOG) of J&K police Aman Kumar Thakur was critically injured while “leading from the front” as fighting broke out between a group of militants holed up in Turigam village and the security forces during a cordon-and-search operation around noon. He was hit in his head in a barrage of gunfire from militants and died on way to hospital, police said. A 2011 batch KPS Officer Thakur was a resident of Gogla village of J&K’s eastern Doda district. He had been heading the SOG in militancy-infested Kulgam for the past one and a half years and had taken part in a number of operations against militants. He is survived by parents, wife Sarla Devi and a six-year-old son Arya, a police spokesman here said.

Two Army officers of the rank of major and a jawan were injured in the clash. The jawan later succumbed to his injuries in the hospital, officials said.

Irate crowds mainly of youth poured out of their homes and while chanting pro-freedom slogans made attempts to disrupt the operation, the police sources said. They clashed with the security forces which fired teargas to contain the situation, the sources added.

This was a yet another encounter in which the security agencies reported casualty since the February 14 terror attack. In a similar clash that took place in Pinglena village of Pulwama on February 18, three JeM militants, Army’s Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal, Havildar Sheo Ram, Sepoy Hari Singh and Sepoy Ajay Kuma, a J&K policeman Abdur Rashid and a civilian Mushtaq Ahmed Butt were killed.

The slain JeM militants included top commanders Kamran Bhai alias Fahad, a “trusted aide” of the outfit’s chief  Moulana Masood Azhar, Ghazi Rasheed alias Luqman, who was known to be an IED specialist (both Pakistani nationals), and a local resident Hilal Ahmed.