Budgam encounter: 3 militants killed, one was involved in DSP lynching

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, July 12

Three militants, two of them from Srinagar, were killed during a nightlong gunfight that ended early Wednesday in central Kashmir’s Budgam district, the police said.

One of the slain militants, Sajad Ahmad Gilkar of Srinagar’s Nowhatta locality, played a “key role” in the lynching of DSP Mohammed Ayub Pandith last month, the police said.

A senior police officer said the three militants were killed in the gunfight at Redbug village of Budgam. A self-loading rifle and pistol have been recovered from the scene of the encounter, suggesting that the militants were poorly armed. The operation was carried out by the state police, Army and the CRPF, the police said. The three slain militants have been identified as Javed Sheikh of Budgam’s Beerwah sub-district, Aqib Gul of Srinagar’s Gooripora locality and Gilkar. It is for the first time in the past decade that militants from Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, have been killed in a gunfight in the region. The last militants killed from Srinagar were Ibrahim Dar of Batamaloo and Ishfaq Rather of Narwara, who died in a gunfight in September 2005. The killing of militants from Srinagar city is the latest sign that the new-age insurgency is spreading out from its strongholds in districts of south Kashmir. Srinagar, which was declared a zero-militancy district several years ago, has again moved back onto the insurgency landscape as a small band of youth from its several neighbourhoods have picked up arms in the last one year.

The two Srinagar militants, killed in Budgam gunfight, had a short-lived affiliation with insurgency as they had joined the militant ranks less than a month ago.

Srinagar remained tense as the news of the killing of two of its youth spread on social media sites following which authorities ordered a shutdown of mobile Internet services in the district. The authorities also imposed restrictions in several areas in Srinagar’s old city.