Author: Yusuf Jameel
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: May 1, 2006
Suspected militants abducted nine Hindu villagers
at gunpoint in a remote area of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday and soon murdered
four of them. The fate of the others is not known, the police said.
A senior police official, confirming the gory
incident, said the villagers had gone up in the hills of Basantgarh in Udhampur
district with their cattle for grazing. They were spotted by the gunmen who
seized them at gunpoint. "The bodies of four of the villagers have been
found lying in the woods, but the fate of the five others is not known,"
said deputy inspector-general of police (Jammu range) Lalit I. Mohanty. He
added that the victims' corpses bore bullet wounds.
The DIG went on to say: "It is up in
the mountains where the gory incident has occurred. We have sent a police
party with a contingent of the Border Security Force (BSF) to launch a search
operation to secure the release of the remaining five abductees if they have
not been harmed and to capture the marauders."
The latest reports reaching Jammu, the state's
winter capital, said that the villagers were seized by militants along a meadow
in the Ludana area near Loran Gala.
The reports added that among the slain men
were three brothers. The victims who bodies were found have been identified
by the police as Shyam Lal, Angrez Singh, Sunit Singh and Om Prakash. Among
those still missing are Ramesh Chand, Jagdish Lal and Yog Raj, as well as
two others.
The reports also said that before seizing
the villagers, the gunmen had kidnapped two other villagers, Seraj Din and
Rukum Din, from the same village.
