The Jammu and Kashmir police has launched a massive manhunt for two residents of Uri who reportedly ferried the group of alleged Pakistani militants involved in Wednesday’s fidayeen attack on the CRPF in their cars to Srinagar from the frontier region.
The militants spent about a fortnight in the city’s Chattabal area, less than two kilometres from Bemina where two of them pretending as players and hiding automatic rifles and grenades in cricket kit bags opened fire on a makeshift CRPF camp, killing five jawans and wounding six others. Both the assailants were shot dead by the security forces in brief encounter. Two others who were part of the posse managed to escape from the scene, earlier reports had suggested.
The J&K police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SoG) late on Thursday night raided a private house owned by one Ghulam Nabi Dar in Rampur locality of Chattabal and arrested an alleged Pakistani militant. Earlier a former militant identified as Bashir Ahmed Mir son of Mir Zaman Mir, originally a resident of Dachi village of Uri, too was taken into custody from a separate house. After surrendering before the security forces he had also worked as a police source.
Senior police and intelligence officials were scheduled to meet here on Friday evening to deliberate on the outcome of the sustained interrogation of the arrested militant.
The police is officially silent on the arrests but some officials while speaking privately to some reporters have claimed that the militant arrested from Dar’s house is a Pakistani national and a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba recruit who allegedly dropped the two suicide attackers near the makeshift CRPF camp on Wednesday. He has been identified as 27-year-old Riyaz Ahmed alias Abu Talha alias Zubair and is a resident of Multan area of Pakistani Punjab.
As claimed by them, the Pakistani militant fired two pistol shots towards the raiding SOG men but was quickly overpowered by them and arrested.