Army men-police clash: Officials in Kupwara to take stock

Naseer Ganai

Srinagar, May 31

Senior officials of Jammu and Kashmir Police on Thursday visited Kupwara after an incident involving Army personnel allegedly entering a police station in the frontier district and assaulting cops.

The incident took place on the intervening night of May 28 and 29. The police have filed a case against 16 Army soldiers, including three officers, for assaulting policemen at a police station in Kupwara district. The police have invoked IPC sections relating to rioting, robbery, kidnapping and attempted murder against the soldiers.

Earlier in a statement, a Defence spokesperson had said: “Reports of an altercation between the police and Army personnel and beating up therein of police personnel are incorrect. Minor differences between the police personnel and a territorial Army unit on an operational matter have been amicably resolved.”

According to the FIR of the police around 9.40 pm, a huge number of armed and uniformed personnel of 160 Territorial Army led by Lieutenant Colonel Ankit Sood, Lieutenant Colonel Rajiv Chauhan and Lieutenant Colonel Nikhil entered the premises of the police station.

The FIR says after being asked why they had reached there, they collectively and without any provocation in the form of an unlawful assembly severely attacked the staff and officers present at police station with rifle butts, kicks and sticks.

“The information was immediately conveyed to senior police officers who rushed to the police station to rescue them. Upon seeing the arrival of police units and senior police officers, the alleged personnel and officers of 160 Territorial Army led by Lieutenant Colonel Ankit Sood, Raju Chauhan, and Nikhil brandished their weapons and snatched the mobile phones of the injured personnel and PS Kupwara SHO Inspector Mohammad Ishaq,” reads the FIR.

The FIR registered at Kupwara police station, invokes IPC sections 186 (voluntary obstruction of public servant in discharge of public duty), 332 (voluntarily causing harm in order to deter public servant from doing duty), 307 (attempt to murder), 342 (wrongful confinement of a person), 147 (rioting), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence in prosecution of common object), 392 (robbery), 397 (use of deadly weapon during a robbery or dacoity) and 365 (kidnapping and abduction with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person).