5 J&K cops, 2 guards die as Hizb targets bank van

Five Jammu and Kashmir policemen and two bank employees were killed when militants attacked a cash van in southern Kulgam district on Monday afternoon.

Militant outfit Hizb-ulMujahedin while owning responsibility for the attack said that it, however, did not kill the bank employees. “They were killed by the CRPF”, a Hizb spokesman was quoting as saying by a local news agency.

Officials in Srinagar said that the cash van of Jammu and Kashmir Bank was intercepted by the gunmen outside Kulgam’s Pombai village. The van was heading towards Anantnag town after unloading cash at the bank’s Nehama branch, they said and added that the gunmen opened indiscriminate fire, resulting in the death of five policemen, including a sub-inspector, and two bank security guards.

A report from Kulgam said that the victims were taken to the district hospital at Kulgam but doctors declared them brought

Continued from Page 1 dead. “They had sustained multiple bullet wounds and had died due to blood loss”, said a hospital official.

The assailants who had suddenly appeared from a roadside apple orchard took the policemen’s service weapons, including four Insas rifles and one AK-47 rifle, with them after committing the crime, police officials said. Security reinforcements immediately launched a manhunt for them. A statement issued by the police in the evening said that the Hizb-ul-Mujahedin terrorists including Omar Majeed and his two associates attacked the cash delivery van. “To pay homage to the martyrs, a wreath-laying ceremony was held,” the statement said.

Deputy Inspector General of Police (South Kashmir range) SP Pani said that preliminary investigations had revealed that it was a group of three militants being led by Hizb’s local commander Omar Majeed which attacked the van at 4.15 pm.

“The gunmen after stopping the cash van asked those on board to get down. They found no cash and shot the policemen and the bank guards in cold blood,” another police official who requested anonymity said.

The slain men have been identified as ASI Bashir Ahmed Dar, selection grade constables Farooq Ahmed Bhat and Muhammad Qasim and constables Muzaffar Ahmed Bhat and Ashfaq Ahmed Hajam, besides J&K Bank security guards Javed Ahmed Bhat and Muzaffar Ahmed Laway.

Though the suspected militants have looted cash from different branches of mainly Jammu and Kashmir Bank in the Valley on several occasions in the past, it is for the first time that bank employees or policemen escorting them in a cash van have been targeted.

The killings came on a day when home minister Rajnath Singh chaired a high-level meeting in Delhi to discuss Jammu and Kashmir’s situation.

Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti strongly condemned the killings by “unknown assailants”. In a statement, she said the killings reflect the dangerous criminalisation turn the society is taking.