CRPF Inspector Killed in Terror Attack in J&K's Udhampur
Srinagar: A Central Reserve Paramilitary Force (CRPF) officer was killed when suspected militants attacked a patrol of security forces in Jammu’s Udhampur district on Monday, August 19, officials said.
The deceased has been identified as Kuldeep Singh, who was posted as an inspector with the CRPF's 187th battalion. A senior police officer said Singh was hit by a bullet when a search team of the CRPF and J&K Police’s elite counterinsurgency unit, Special Operations Group (SOG), came under intense firing in the remote Dudu area of Basantgarh.
“A group of terrorists fired on the search party at around 3:30 pm, resulting in injuries to Singh who was immediately evacuated to a hospital where he succumbed to injuries,” the official said, adding that additional reinforcements have been rushed to the area to hunt down the perpetrators.
The attack took place five days after a young army captain, Deepak Singh, was gunned down during a similar counterinsurgency operation in Shivgarh-Assar forest area of Doda district in Jammu following which the militants, who are believed to be highly trained in jungle warfare, managed to escape from the area. A civilian was also injured in the exchange of gunfire.
Earlier, two soldiers and a civilian were killed during a gunfight with suspected militants in the Anantnag district of south Kashmir on August 10 while an army soldier was killed and at least four more soldiers, including an officer, were injured in another militant attack on July 27 in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district.
Even though Kashmir has remained largely peaceful following the reading down of Article 370 in 2019, the epicentre of conflict-related violence has shifted to the Jammu region where armed forces are battling a group of heavily armed militants, some of them believed by officials to be former soldiers of Pakistan Army, who have taken refuge in the highlands of Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal regions.
In the past three years, at least 51 army soldiers, which includes senior officers, have been killed by militants in the Jammu region, raising questions about the claims of the Bhartiya Janta Party-led Union government that normalcy had been restored in J&K following its controversial bifurcation into two union territories in 2019.
The attacks, which gained momentum in 2021, were initially restricted to the forested districts of Poonch and Rajouri. However, in recent months, they have spread to the Chenab Valley districts of Doda and Kishtwar as well as the plains of Kathua and Udhampur districts, prompting the security establishment to deploy additional forces in the entire Jammu division.
The surge in attacks in Jammu has coincided with heightened infiltration attempts by militants along the Line of Control (LoC) and International Border in J&K. According to official data, the army foiled three infiltration attempts along the LoC in July in the Kupwara district of north Kashmir in which officials claimed to have shot dead six unidentified militants.
A non-commissioned officer of the army also gave his life in a shootout during a face-off with the infiltrators.
The Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir is heading into its first assembly election in a decade next month and the surge in militant attacks on security forces and civilians in the Jammu region is likely to give a tough time to the security establishment in ensuring that the polls are held in a peaceful environment.
The polls are scheduled to be held in three phases and the results are expected to be announced in the first week of October.
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