“We were under pressure to do something more because their activity had been increasing in that belt…we wanted to get them somehow.”
Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR: The idea of offering government jobs and money in lieu of information regarding active militants seems to have worked for the police in north Kashmir’ Baramulla district.
Barely ten days after, one of the seven militants named in the list has been killed.
On September 8, the police in Baramulla district issued posters written in Urdu. They read: “Get a reward worth lakhs of rupees plus a government job for providing information regarding these people who are involved in murder, robbery and other heinous crimes…”
The posters promised to keep the informers’ names a secret.
On Tuesday, Aqib Rashid and Bilal Ahmed, militants of the Hizbul Mujahideen outfit and residents of Palhallan town, were killed in a gunfight with security forces in nearby Goshbug village.
Rashid’s name had figured on the poster.
Police have said the gunfight was triggered after specific information about the presence of these militants in a school building in the village. A top police official who spoke to FreePress on condition of anonymity said the militants were waiting for someone and didn’t expect to be caught up in a fight.
“They were not ready. The arms they carried didn’t suggest that they were out for an encounter – one AK-74 and a Chinese pistol – that’s all,” he said.
“Although we cannot say if the posters worked with surety, but yes the operation was launched after somebody informed us. There are people ready to work for nothing else but money”.
Militants getting killed after their locations were compromised has not been rare in Kashmir. Then why the official posters?
The police official said “we were under pressure to do something more because their activity had been increasing in that belt…we wanted to get them somehow.”
Rashid is believed to have joined Hizbul Mujahideen four months ago. The other slain militant, Bilal Ahmed, was his friend. According to the police officer, Bilal’s name didn’t figure in the list because he had joined much later.
“To be honest, we were not sure about him.”
