Terrorists responsible for a schoolteacher’s killing in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam district on May 31 have been trapped, a police officer said on Wednesday hours after a bank employee’s killer was killed in a separate anti-insurgency operation in neighbouring Shopian.
Inspector general Vijay Kumar said they will share further details of the Kulgam operation after it concludes. “The terrorists responsible for the killers of Rajni Bala have been trapped in Kulgam,” he said.
Bala, the 36-year-old teacher from Jammu, was shot dead on campus in Kulgam’s Gopalpora amid a series of targeted attacks on civilians and police personnel.
Police said the security forces earlier gunned down bank employee Vijay Kumar’s killer along with another Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist. The 26-year-old bank employee from Rajasthan was shot dead inside his office on June 2 in Kulgam.
Police said that the operation against Bala’s killer was halted on Tuesday night and it resumed on Wednesday morning. They added a joint cordon and the search operation was separately launched following information regarding the presence of terrorists in Shopian.
“During the search operation, as the joint party approached towards the suspected spot, the hiding terrorists fired indiscriminately upon the joint search party which was retaliated effectively leading to an encounter,” the police said in the statement. It added the two LeT terrorists, Jan Mohd Lone and Tufail Nazir Ganie, were killed in the exchange of fire that followed and their bodies were retrieved from the site.
{{/usCountry}}“During the search operation, as the joint party approached towards the suspected spot, the hiding terrorists fired indiscriminately upon the joint search party which was retaliated effectively leading to an encounter,” the police said in the statement. It added the two LeT terrorists, Jan Mohd Lone and Tufail Nazir Ganie, were killed in the exchange of fire that followed and their bodies were retrieved from the site.
{{/usCountry}}The statement cited police records and added both were linked with LeT and involved in attacks on security forces and civilians.
Inspector general Kumar said that Lone was involved in the bank employee’s killing. He added that Lone earlier worked as an “overground worker” for LeT’s district commander Adil Ramzan. “He killed the bank employee on the directions of the commander. After this crime, he actively joined terrorists. Since then, we have been tracking him.”
He said Ganie earlier survived two gunbattles in Kulgam in April. The police officer added arms and ammunition were recovered from the Shopian gunbattle site. He appreciated the police’s efforts in tracking down and neutralising the terrorist involved in the bank employee’s killing.