Army Jawan Guarding Military Station in Jammu Killed in Mysterious Firing; Terror Attack Ruled Out
Srinagar: The Army on Monday said that it has launched a probe into a mysterious shooting incident in which a soldier was critically injured at a military base in Jammu earlier in the day. The jawan succumbed to his injuries in a hospital.
Army sources in Jammu said that preliminary investigations suggested that it was not a terror attack as reported earlier. The cause of the death of the soldier is being investigated, the Army said.
The Jammu and Kashmir police are also investigating the incident. “The police are committed to pursuing all angles pertaining to the case including the possibility of it being an incident of fratricide and, if so, was there a deliberate attempt to pass it off as a terror attack,” a police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.
Earlier reports had said that suspected militants opened fire at the Sunjwan military station in Jammu at around 10.50 am. The fire was returned by the Army, triggering a brief exchange of fire, the reports had added.
"We are told that it was during the exchange of fire that an Army jawan sustained bullet wounds," a police officer who was part of a team which visited the area for the investigation soon after the incident had said.
Army sources had also said that the militants targeted a sentry post, manned by the 36 Infantry Brigade, at the military station. They added that the soldiers retaliated to the fire and quickly launched a search operation in the area. The J&K police and the CRPF joined the operation later. Camera-fitted drones were being used to track down the militants, a report from Jammu had said, adding that a vast area close to the military station has been sealed to conduct searches.
The Sunjwan military station has come under terror attacks earlier also. In February 2018, the members of proscribed Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) had stormed the 36 Brigade headquarters of the Army's Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry (JAKLI) at Sunjwan, leaving five soldiers and the father of one of them dead and eleven persons including a major rank officer injured. All the three attackers were also killed in the gunfight that had ensued between the two sides.
The Army had said that the "heavily equipped and highly motivated terrorists” were wearing combat fatigues and that during the operation IAF Para commandos airlifted from garrison town of Udhampur and Sarsawa in Haryana along with Army’s special forces took part in the operation “flush out” whereas Army helicopters and drones and aerial surveillance by the IAF were used to neutralise the holed-up militants.
Meanwhile, the Border Security Force (BSF) and the J&K police on Monday claimed to have seized a consignment of weapons which was dropped using a drone in the frontier district of Samba. The consignment, they said, included three pistols and other incriminating materials. The drone carrying it had entered Samba’s Ramgarh sector from across the International Border (IB) with Pakistan, they added.
Giving the details of the operation, the official said that on credible input regarding the drone activity in the Mallu Chack area of Ramgarh, a joint ambush by the BSF and the J&K police was laid in the area. “On hearing the humming sound of the drone coming from the Pak side, security personnel fired some rounds towards the direction of the humming sound and pushed the drone back to the Pak side. Later the consignment was recovered, suspected to have been dropped by the drone”, they added.
