Of 3 Jaish operatives killed in Kulgam, 2 were Pakistanis, one Kashmiri

Two Pakistanis and a local man were among the three Jaish-e-Mohammed militants killed in a gun battle with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam on Sunday, police said on Monday. A deputy superintendent of Jammu and Kashmir police and an Indian Army soldier were also killed in the encounter in Turigam village of Yaripora on Sunday. Deputy superintendent of police (special operations) Aman Kumar Thakur was hit in the encounter with militants when personnel of state police, army and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) cornered them in a cordon-and-search operation in the village. The state police said in a statement that the three have been identified as Raqib Ahmad Sheikh, the son of Mohammad Amin Sheikh of Shiganpora in Kulgam, and the other two were Waleed and Numan from Pakistan. “The two killed Pakistani terrorists, Waleed and Numan, as per police records were the top commanders of proscribed terror outfit JeM, who were active in Southern parts of Kashmir valley,” the police statement said. “They were involved in conspiring and executing several terrorist attacks and were wanted by the law for their complicity in a series of terror crimes, including an attack on security establishments and civilian atrocities. Several terror crime cases were registered against them for their terrorist activities,” it said. Police said arms and ammunition, including rifles, recovered from the site of the encounter have been taken for further investigation and “to probe their complicity in other terror cases”. “Citizens are once again requested not to venture inside the encounter zone since such an area can prove dangerous due to stray explosive materials. People are requested to cooperate with police till the area is completely sanitized and cleared of all the explosives materials if any,” the statement added. Thakur was a 2011 batch officer of the Kashmir State Police, who was leading the operation. He had been heading the counter-terrorism wing of Jammu and Kashmir police in Kulgam district for the last one and a half years and had played an instrumental role in killing terrorists in the area, a police spokesperson had said on Sunday. A resident of Gogla in Doda district of the state, Thakur is survived by his parents, wife Sarla Devi and six-year-old son Arya. This year, 37 militants have been killed in various encounters with security forces across Kashmir while eight army personnel and three policemen have lost their lives in the state. Four civilians have also died in various violent incidents since the beginning of 2019. On February 18, in a major operation against the JeM leadership, three top militants, including two Pakistanis, were killed in south Kashmir’s Pulwama which also led to the killing of four army personnel, one of them a major, and a policeman. The JeM militants were killed within 100 hours of a deadly car bomb attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama in which 40 CRPF personnel and a local JeM militant, who was the driver of the car, were killed on February 14. On February 22, two militants of JeM were killed in an encounter with security forces in Sopore area of Baramulla in north Kashmir. Source: Hindustan Times