Surrenders welcome development: IGP
Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Oct 28: Two Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militants were killed, while a soldier was injured in an encounter in Mouchwa area of Central Kashmir’s Budgam district today.
The encounter started last evening when security forces including Srinagar Police, Budgam Police and Army’s 50RR cordoned off Mouchwa area of Budgam district on the outskirts of Srinagar after specific inputs about presence of militants hiding in the village.
Click here to watch video
As the joint team of forces approached towards the suspected spot, the hiding militants fired upon the security forces, triggering a gun battle. The operation was halted last night due to darkness and was resumed this morning.
As the operation was resumed in the morning, huge blasts and rifle fire was heard from the area which continued for several hours during which two militants were killed.
Police said that during the search operation, as the presence of militants was ascertained they were given opportunity to surrender. However, they refused and fired indiscriminately on troops.
Police said that they have recovered incriminating materials including arms and ammunition from the site of encounter. “All the recovered materials have been taken into case records for further investigation and to probe their complicity in other terror crimes”, police said.
The dead bodies were buried at Handwara after completion of all medico-legal formalities.
A soldier was also injured in the encounter and he was shifted to Army’s 92 Base hospital at Badami Bagh Cantonment Srinagar for treatment, where his condition is said to be stable.
Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir range, Vijay Kumar, said that operation at Mouchwa area was launched on a specific input during which two militants were killed. He identified one of the killed militants as Javaid Ahmad Ganie, resident of Pulwama and the other as Khalid alias Ilyas, a Pakistani national.
He said that this year eight militants surrendered during encounters across Kashmir with five of them surrendering this month alone and termed it as a welcome development. “This year so far, eight surrenders took place in live encounters in the Valley of which five militants surrendered in the month of October alone,” he said.
He reiterated his appeal to the new militant recruits to return and join the mainstream.
To query that encounters are taking place in Srinagar and city outskirts, he said it was because of the smooth flow of intelligence inputs and other technical information, Srinagar police comes to know about the militant movement in the city. “Police has a good network in the city,” he said.
The IGP said that the role of Illyas in highway attacks can’t be ruled out and that police is investigating their involvement.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
