Two officers and a para commando of the Indian Army and a militant died on Sunday as security forces continued their operation for the second consecutive day to flush out militants holed up in a four-storey Government building in south Kashmir’s Pampore area. Two Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) men and a civilian had died in the encounter on Saturday and a dozen troopers including an Assistant Commandant of CRPF were wounded in the gun battle.
Sources said the paratroopers and commandos were called in to launch a decisive assault on the holed-up militants past midnight. While the commandos scaled up the third floor of the spacious building, militants opened a volley of fire critically wounding 10 Para officer Pawan Kumar. He was airlifted to 92 Base Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. Kumar, 22, a resident of Jind district in Haryana was leading a column of commandos.
The Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) building nestled between Jhelum River and Srinagar-Jammu National Highway was in flames in the afternoon as helicopter and camera-fitted Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) hovered in the sky to trace out location of the militants.
In the afternoon, a paratrooper 32-year-old lance Naik Om Prakash was hit by bullets. He was also evacuated to hospital but could not be saved. Prakash had been flown in for his expertise in anti-militancy operations.
Around 5 pm the security forces suffered another major casualty when another Captain of the elite 9-Para commandos Tushar Gupta was killed. Gupta was a resident of Udhampur in Jammu & Kashmir.
Paying tributes to the slain soldiers, GoC XV Corps lt Gen Satish Dua saluted the courage and selflessness of both the soldiers and said that their cause will be taken to logical conclusion. Speaking about Capt Pawan Kumar he said, “He had voluntarily taken upon himself to lead his men into this most difficult phase of the operation.
His commitment to his men, duty and the uniform he so proudly donned, can be gauged from the fact that despite having been wounded in an earlier encounter with terrorists only last month, he had refused to proceed on sick leave to be with his team for this operation. They have done the nation proud and the nation salutes them”.
A CRPF spokesman Bhuvesh Chowdary said that one militant has been killed in the encounter so far.
The encounter started on Saturday afternoon when heavily-armed militants suspected to be lashkar-e-Tayyeba (leT) cadre, ambushed a CRPF convoy at Sempora, 10 kilometers from here on the periphery of Pampore town killing two CRPF head constables.
Immediately after the assault, militants rushed into EDI building and took positions there. More than a hundred employees and prospective entrepreneurs were inside the building when the stand-off began.
All civilians except a gardener Abdul Gani Mir were evacuated from the encounter site, mostly in armoured vehicles. Mir received bullets in his abdomen and was taken to hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people staged protest demonstrations in Pampore town despite police advisory against approaching the encounter sites. The people tried to march towards the EDI building to support the holed-up militants.