Four militants killed, Policeman injured in gun battle in Nagrota
Security forces gunned down four terrorists of Jaish-e-Mohammad in a gunfight near Nagrota town in the Jammu district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, officials said. A policeman was also injured in the gun battle, which started around 4.50am near the toll plaza in the Ban area of Nagrota on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway.
Officer of the Special Operations Group–Kuldeep Raj, 32, of Akhnoor in Jammu district was injured in the exchange of fire. He was taken to Government Medical College and Hospital in Jammu with injuries on the neck. His condition has been stated to be stable.
“In the exchange of fire four terrorists were eliminated. Terrorists lobbed grenades on security forces during checking. The truck also caught fire and a few grenades also exploded inside it during the exchanges,” Mukesh Singh, inspector general of police of Jammu zone, said.
According to officials familiar with the development, the terrorists came in the truck and were on their way to Kashmir. “It was put to check by the policemen at the toll plaza because we had intelligence inputs with us,” one of the officers said.
A senior officer said that it seemed the JeM terrorists adopted the similar modus-operandi of infiltrating from across the international border in Jammu region before boarding a Kashmir-bound truck on Pathankot-Jammu national highway the preceding night. “However, forces eliminated them in a swift operation,” he said. He also said that the terrorists are likely to have entered through fresh infiltration from the Samba sector.
Shivnandan Singh, a spokesperson of the Central Reserve Police Force, said Thursday’s gunfight was similar to the encounter on January this year as a group of terrorists opened fire at a joint party of police and CRPF at the Ban toll plaza. Singh was referring to an encounter on January 31 when a group of terrorists had similarly opened fire at a police team near the toll plaza, triggering a gunfight in which three terrorists were killed and a policeman was injured.