Militants kill cop in J&K gunfight, flee from spot

A policeman with the special operations group (SOG) was killed in a gunfight with militants in Jammu and Kashmir’s Batmaloo area in Srinagar on Sunday. The militants, although two of them were injured, managed to escape and two of their accomplices were detained, the police said.

Five other security personnel, including two Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) men, were injured in the shootout that started during a pre-dawn raid launched after the police received information about a militant hideout in the area, which is surrounded by the zonal police headquarters, control room and civil secretariat.

Two men have been arrested for alleged rape and abduction of a 19-year-old woman, following which she is suspected to have committed suicide by jumping into the Chenab river, in Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi district, a police officer said on Sunday.

The woman’s father had lodged a missing complaint on July 24, the officer added.

After analysing the woman’s call record details, Paramjeet Singh was arrested, the officer said. Singh told the police that his friend, Pankaj Khajuria, was using the phone number on his name to “entice” the victim.

An FIR was registered after the woman’s relatives accused Khajuria, his friend Naresh Kumar and Singh of abducting her. Subsequently, police arrested Khajuria from his shop at Talwara, and Kumar, who had fled to Amritsar.

The officer said, “During questioning, it came to the fore that Khajuria was in a relationship with the woman and used to call her using Singh’s SIM card and also promised to marry her.”

The police said Khajuria had called the woman at Baradari Bridge from where he and his friend Kumar took her to a secluded under-construction house in Talwara and raped her.

The officer said, soon after, the woman went to the Chenab bridge, called up Khajuria several times and had threatened to commit suicide by jumping into the river.

A cellphone confiscated from Khajuria had “a vital clue in the form of an audio recording...,” the officer added. The audio clip purportedly revealed the phone conversation between woman and Khajuria from the bridge.

Police said massive efforts were on to trace the woman.

The relatives of the woman staged a protest at Talwara on Sunday demanding severe punishments for the culprits.