Police identifies two Hizb militants as ‘killers’ in Sopore; reward of Rs 20 lakh for their arrest

 

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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SRINAGAR, Jun 16: In a significant development, Police on Tuesday identified two top militants of Hizbul Mujahideen as the ‘killers’ of six civilians in a chain of terror attacks in Sopore. It announced cash reward of Rs 20 lakh for their arrest even as a Police officer’s Personal Security Officer was shot dead by unidentified gunmen outside the Police Station in Bijbehara township of South Kashmir.

At several places in the much terrorised township of Sopore, Police pasted posters carrying sketches of the top wanted Hizbul Mujahideen militants Abdul Qayoom Najar and Imtiyaz Ahmad Kandoo, holding them responsible for the back-to-back killing of six civilians in less than a month. It announced cash reward of Rs 10 lakh for each militant’s arrest. Facing flak for a series of terror attacks that left six people dead in the last around three weeks in Sopore, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s government finally announced the sizable cash reward for anybody who would help the Police in arresting the duo.

Hours after the posters came up in Sopore, suspected guerrillas fired a rifle grenade in Muslim Peer locality late on Tuesday night. Preliminary reports said that it did not cause any damage. IGP Kashmir Javaid Mujtaba Gillani told State Times that the residents of Muslim Peer heard an explosion late on Tuesday night. A Police party rushed to the spot for an inspection of the site.

IGP said that an unidentified person fired pistol shots on Constable Arif Ahmad, the PSO of SHO Bijbehara, outside Police Station Bijbehara, killing him on the spot. “Yes, a Constable has died in the attack and we are just ascertaining the facts”, IGP said.

The cash reward posters appeared in Sopore ahead of a shutdown called by both factions of the Hurriyat Conference, JKLF chairman Yasin Malik and Shabir Ahmad Shah of Democratic Freedom Party. The separatists have held the government agencies responsible for the killing of the six civilians and called for a Valley-wide protest shutdown on Wednesday, to be followed up by a mass march from Srinagar to Sopore on Friday.

In reaction to the Police announcement, Pakistan-based militant amalgam United Jihad Council rejected the government’s allegation against the two Hizb militants. Its spokesman Sadaqat Hussain said in a statement that the militant conglomerate would carry out its independent investigation as, according to him, Police carried no credibility. According to him, successors of Kukka Parray were still existing in J&K Police. He asserted that UJC would identify the killers of the six civilians and give him suitable punishment.

In a related development, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba supported the Kashmiri separatists’ call for shutdown on Wednesday and a march to Sopore on Friday.

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