Militant, civilian killed in Udhampur encounter

Cornered militant fires at CRPF camp from bus, kills woman, injures 3 security men critically before being shot

A militant and a civilian woman were killed and three security personnel injured critically as a paramilitary camp at Kud on the Jammu-Srinagar highway came under attack at about 5pm on Monday.

The militant is reported to have opened fire from a bus the moment it reached a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) check post about 45 kilometres from Udhampur. (Nitin Kanotra/HT Photo)

The militant is reported to have opened fire from a bus the moment it reached a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) check post about 45 kilometres from Udhampur. The bullets hit three jawans of the CRPF’s 84 battalion and a woman passenger, and she succumbed to her injuries later.

Udhampur-Reasi deputy inspector general Surinder Kumar Gupta said the encounter had ended with the killing of the lone militant aboard the bus. The three injured security personnel were shifted to the district hospital. “Police and the CRPF were searching all the Jammu-bound vehicles near the Kral Nullah at Kud when they flagged down this bus and the armed passenger, who remains unidentified, opened indiscriminate fire at them,” director general of police (DGP) K Rajendra Kumar told PTI.

Among the injured, Rubin Thappa of Gurdaspur in Punjab and Balbir of Krishna Nagar in Jammu were moved to Udhampur’s Military Hospital. Their condition is stated to be critical. A search for more militants is on in the area.

The attack comes roughly a year after militants ambushed a Border Security Force (BSF) convoy on the Jammu-Srinagar highway in Udhampur, killing two personnel and injuring a dozen soldiers. In that operation, the army captured one of the two attackers, identified as Mohammed Naved of Pakistan’s Faisalabad, only the second Pakistani terrorist to be captured alive after Ajmal Kasab was caught during the 2008 Mumbai attacks.