Man, nephew killed by gunmen in north Kashmir

A man and his nephew were abducted and killed by gunmen in north Kashmir’s Hajin area of Bandipora district on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, police said.

Police said militants barged into the houses of Gh Hassan Dar (45), alias Hassan Rassa, and his nephew Bashir Ahmad Dar (26), a driver, in Gulshan Mohalla of Shahgund Hajin and abducted them.

“At about 3:30 am, the terrorists shot both of them dead. The dead bodies were found by the locals near a mosque at Raheem Dar Mohalla,” a police spokesman said.

Preliminary investigations suggest the involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the spokesman said, adding that a case has been registered and investigation taken up.

The killings come hours after a 35-year-old man was killed and his wife critically injured in neighbouring Sopore town on Friday evening.

The militants, suspected to be of LeT, barged into Mohammad Ashraf Mir’s home in the Harwan area of Sopore in Baramulla district and opened fire.

Superintendent of police, Sopore, Javaid Iqbal, said Mir was hit by five bullets and died before reaching the hospital in Sopore while his wife was injured in both the legs and has been shifted to Srinagar.

Since Monday, six persons have been killed in north Kashmir.

The motive behind the killings is not yet clear, police said.

Police suspect LeT, including foreigners, is also behind the killings of Asif Ahmad Sheikh, Haseeb Ahmad Khan and Mohammad Asgar, whose bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baramulla’s old town on Monday night.

Separatists condemned the killings, saying any killing on the grounds of political or party affiliations was inhuman and unacceptable.

In a joint statement, Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik observed that the state and militants blamed each other, and in the process, “the culprits never get identified”.