Two securitymen were arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir police after a mentally ill Hindu civilian seized by them from a Rajouri market was later killed in a fake encounter in the Surankote area of Poonch over the weekend. The
man was branded a top Lashkar-e-Tayyaba commander, possibly in the hope of gallantry awards and professional elevation for all those involved.
J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah expressed regret for the killing of the civilian, later identified as Ashok Kumar, a local resident, but said the Army was misled by the two securitymen.
Poonch SSP Ashkoor Wani identified the arrested men as Abdul Majeed, a Territorial Army jawan, and Noor Hussein, a special police officer with the Special Operations Group. They were charged with murder under Section 302 of the Ranbir Penal Code.
Local Muslims were initially approached by the Army to take the body of the slain man and give it an Islamic burial, but they refused. The police later raised doubts about the deceased being a “militant”, and a post-mortem showed the man was a mentally-challenged Hindu civilian. A spokesman for the Army’s Nagrota (Jammu)-based 16 Corps, Col. A. Arora, said the SOG had given it wrong information, on the basis of which it claimed a terrorist was killed in the encounter. The police has launched a probe into the fake encounter killing, while the Army has separately instituted a court of inquiry.