JAMMU, Jan 31 (1994): Moslem militants opened fire on Sunday at a helicopter carrying Indian Home (Interior) Minister S.B. Chavan on a visit to violence-torn Kashmir state, witnesses and police said on Monday.
However the authorities have denied that the minister came under attack.
Witnesses say the militants began shooting from nearby hilltops as the helicopter landed at Doda in southeastern Kashmir. There was no damage and no one was hurt.
But the government’s chief spokesman, S. Narendra, told reporters that the “Firing was nowhere near the vicinity of the home minister’s helicopter”.
Doda is a growing centre of militancy in a four-year-old uprising against Indian rule in the Himalayan state, the only Moslem-majority region in mainly Hindu India.
Police and hospital sources say more than 15,000 people have been killed in the rebellion, many of them civilians.
Some of Kashmir’s many militant groups demand independence while others want union with neighbouring Islamic Pakistan.
