Srinagar: In the third incident of targeted killing in Kashmir in as many days, a J&K police head constable was shot dead outside his residence in Baramulla district on Tuesday, October 31.
The victim was identified as Ghulam Mohammad Dar. Family sources said he was posted with a middle-rung police officer as a reader in Srinagar and was off-duty when the attack took place.
Witnesses, who spoke with The Wire, said that two bike-borne men waylaid the father of seven unmarried girls outside his residence in Wailoo Kralpora of Baramulla district of north Kashmir on Tuesday evening.
Bashir Ahmad Parry, Dar’s brother-in-law, said that the slain police official was returning home after dropping two labourers at their accommodation on his bike. The labourers were working at his home during the day, he said.
“I heard gunshots at around 7 pm and rushed there immediately. When I reached, the body had been taken to the hospital. There was blood on the road. He had collapsed near the gate, which had bullet holes,” Parry told The Wire outside the residence of Dar.
“He was an honest and god-fearing person. Unlike some police officials, he would never try to flaunt his credentials. He used to play with children in the village as if they were his own,” Parry added.
A senior official in the administration said that the victim was taken to a district hospital in Tangmarg, where he was declared dead by doctors. According to hospital officials, the victim had suffered multiple bullet wounds in his chest.
Bilal Ahmad Parry, a revenue official (lambardar) in Kralpora, said that Dar had returned home from Srinagar on Monday, October 30. “The whole village knows him as an honest officer and a humble man. He was a very kind person who would help others in need,” he said.
Soon after the incident, anguished villagers milled around the residence of Dar to console his family in their hour of grief. According to witnesses, the family members of Dar had a heated argument over some unknown reason with security forces who arrived at the spot for clues about the identity of the perpetrators.
A pall of gloom descended on the village soon after the news of Dar’s killing broke, while security forces were seen carrying out searches in the area to hunt down the suspects. When this report was filed, some relatives of the deceased were waiting outside the hospital for his body, which was sent for a post-mortem examination.
Security personnel at the scene of the shooting in Baramulla in which a police official was shot dead. Photo: Sajad Hameed
At Dar’s residence, his wife, whose name could not be ascertained immediately, was seen beating her chest and pulling her hair while some women were comforting her. The victim’s daughters were crying inconsolably while calling out for their father to “return home”.
No militant outfit has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, which is the third such incident in three days in Kashmir. Security has been beefed up across the Valley in the aftermath of Sunday’s attack in Srinagar in which a J&K police inspector was injured critically.
A day later, on Monday, Mukesh Kumar, 45, a migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh was shot dead by suspected militants in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district when he was visiting a bank. The victim was working as a fireman at a brick kiln.
The latest attack in Baramulla took place on the day the Jammu and Kashmir Police went through a change of guard, with the intelligence chief of the Union Territory and 1991 batch IPS officer R.R. Swain taking over as the new director general of the J&K Police.
The outgoing police chief, Dilbag Singh, said on Monday that the police force needs to remain cautious “as threats remain” in Jammu and Kashmir. “We can’t take things lightly,” DGP Singh, who retired on October 31, told reporters in Srinagar.
The three attacks in three days are reminiscent of the tensions that had flared up in Kashmir in 2021, when a spate of targeted attacks were carried out against the members of the minority Hindu community and migrant workers, prompting many of them to leave the Valley.
Since Article 370 was read down in 2019, security forces claim to have achieved major successes in the battle against militancy in Jammu and Kashmir with a sweeping crackdown launched against militant outfits and those accused of having connections with militants.
However, the battle seems far from over as militants have sporadically carried out sensational attacks targeting civilians and security forces alike. Nearly three dozen security personnel and civilians have been gunned down by militants this year so far, which has been the most peaceful in terms of insurgency-related violence.