Youth who snatched cop’s gun shot dead in encounter

The man who had while being interrogated for his alleged militant connection at a police camp in Tral area of J&K’s southern Pulwama district snatched the service rifle of a policeman and then shot him a day ago was killed in what the officials claimed was an encounter early Thursday.

Inspector-general of police (Kashmir range) Vijay Kumar claimed the slain man Muhammad Amin Malik was provided “ample opportunities” to surrender but he refused. “The officers made repeated appeals to him to surrender. Also, his mother and some other family members were called to persuade him to lay down the weapon and surrender before the authorities but he ignored all these appeals and continued to open fire at the policemen. He was killed in retaliatory fire.” There was no word from Malik’s family on the police claims.

Malik, as per the police, had taken shelter in the power-generator room within the camp of J&K police’s counterinsurgency special operations group at Tral. A police statement issued here claimed that he was an “active terror operative” of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen who was “neutralised” in an overnight operation jointly conducted by the police, 42 Rashtriya Rifles of the Army and the 180th Battalion of the CRPF.

It said that Malik was arrested on May 30 along with “incriminating materials-arms, ammunition and explosives including unlicensed 12 bore gun, live rounds, explosives, iron and steel balls, nine feature phones and other warlike stores used in the fabrication of IEDs”. It added, “The terror operative was on police remand and was on Wednesday brought from the police station Tral to the police component complex, Tral, for further interrogation”. But during the interrogation, he got hold of the service rifle (AK 47) of constable Amjad Khan and fired indiscriminately with the intention to kill the police personnel”.