A call that changed course of encounter

NEW DELHI: A call by soldiers to slain army colonel Ashutosh Sharma’s phone that was likely answered by a terrorist changed the course of the 13-hour encounter in north Kashmir’s Handwara town, a top police officer said on Sunday.

The call was made at 10pm on Saturday, around six hours after the gunfight began outside a house in Handwara’s Chanjmulla locality where a group of terrorists were holed in after taking a local family hostage. The fact that an alien voice, likely one of the terrorists, answered Sharma’s phone told the soldiers and police who ring fenced the house that the five security personnel had been hit.

Until then, the forces were firing sparingly in order to ensure the safety of the trapped family and the security personnel inside the house; but once the phone call was done, the top brass felt no need to hold back, the Jammu and Kashmir police officer added on condition of anonymity.

The encounter began at 3.30pm on Saturday and shortly after 5.30pm, Sharma entered the house with three other soldiers and a police sub-inspector. They quickly succeeded in getting the family out, but got trapped themselves. “Between 6 pm and 10 pm, we tried every way we could think to get in touch with him or other members of the team. But we couldn’t,” the police officer quoted above told HT.

At about 10 pm, someone answered the phone. “Assalamualaikum,” the man on the other end of the line said, according to the officer. “Our officers figured that there was only one way they could have gotten hold of his phone,” the officer added.

In the early part of the encounter, the forces had to ensure that the trapped family wasn’t harmed and hence couldn’t fire at full blast. Once the team rescued the family, the safety of the five personnel was a priority, and firing was temporarily suspended. But after the call, which indicated that Sharma and his team were hit, the firing resumed in full force. It continued through the night into the early hours of Sunday. When security forces finally entered the house, they found two terrorists, dead. One of them was identified as Haider, a Pakistani national who was a top commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir.