Two LeT terrorists killed in encounter with security forces in J-K\'s Shopian

Srinagar: The security forces on Tuesday killed two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants during an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Shopian district, the officials said, adding that one of the slain men had earlier this year murdered a Kashmiri Pandit in neighbouring Pulwama district.

The police and Army statements on the encounter said that operation was launched jointly by the J&K police, the Army’s 44 Rashtriya Rifles and the 178th battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) following credible information about the presence of separatist militants in the village.

They identified the slain militants as Moarifat Maqbool and Jazim Farooq alias Abrar, both residents of Shopian. “Both were categorised terrorists and involved in several terror crime cases including attacks on the police and other security forces besides civilian atrocities. Jazim Farooq was involved also in the killing of Kashmiri Pandit Sanjay Sharma in Pulwama in February this year,” a police spokesman said, adding that another LeT cadre Aquib Bhat involved in the same incident was killed in an encounter at Padgampora (Pulwama) in February itself.

Meanwhile, the authorities on Tuesday demolished three edifices housing an Islamic seminary in Pulwama’s Chewa Kalan village. A police spokesman said that the action was taken by the revenue authorities with the help of the police on the “recommendation” of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as the structure was built illegally on government-owned land.

The spokesman also said that a gun fight between the militants and security forces had taken place inside the Dar-ul-Uloom (seminary) in March last year, leaving one local militant Aquib Mushtaq and his foreign accomplice dead.