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| Police contests Army's claims on terrorists killed | | | AGENCIES
Kupwara, May 10: The claims by the Army having neutralized a maximum number of militants, who sneaked into Kashmir recently, have been hotly contested by the local police, who have picked up trails of militants and the FIRs registered showing only 25 had been eliminated.
Notwithstanding the recent claims of Brigadier General Staff of 15 Corps Gurmeet Singh that 32 militants had been killed and that there were only two infiltration bids since March, the figures with the local police have a different story to tell as they have spotted fresh batches in so far as Ganderbal and Bandipore areas of North Kashmir are concerned.
As per the statement of a local militant who surrendered alongwith Syed Moinullah Shah, a group of 120 militants, launched by the Hizbul Mujahideen's Imtiyaz Aalam, entered into Kashmir valley through Kel (Neelum Valley) and reached Bunar forest into Gurez through Naushera and Nad areas in North.
Though Army claimed that 12 militants of the group were killed in an avalanche while nearly 82 others had returned, the FIR registered by the Army showed only one unidentified militant was killed. There is no FIR, a mandatory procedure after gun battle, of the 11 other militants that the Army claimed to have killed.
Army declined to give any clarification and there were no replies to questions mailed to Col JS Brar, spokesman for Srinagar-based 15-Corps, despite repeated reminders.
The Army's claim that it had arrested Shah, a resident of Dhir district of North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, had loopholes as the FIR numbers 70/2009 and 71/2009 in Gurez area of North Kashmir show that Shah along with a local militant -- Iqbal Dajeo, a Bandipora resident -- had surrendered after being pressurized by the police.
Later, the Army took over Shah's custody as he was a foreign militant and left the local militant with the police. Shah was paraded before the media in last week of April but the press interaction was cut short after he spilled the beans that he had not been arrested but had surrendered.
About the number of terrorists, the Army claimed that 56 militants had infiltrated into the Valley since March 20, out of which 32 had been killed, one arrested and 17 were still at large. Six were believed to have been buried in an avalanche.
However, the facts registered with various police stations in Kupwara, Bandipore and Tanghdar show a different figure in which the causality was only 25 which included death of three terrorists because of extreme cold conditions.
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