SRINAGAR (AP): A politician belonging to India’s ruling party was shot dead by unidentified assailants in occupied Kashmir, and separately, police on Thursday killed a detainee who they said snatched an officer’s rifle and fired at officials inside a police camp.
According to details, the unidentified assailants shot Rakesh Pandita late Wednesday in the southern town of Tral, where he was visiting a friend. He was declared dead in a hospital.
“Area cordoned off and search is going on,” the police said. While no group claimed responsibility for the attack, authorities blamed it on rebels who have been fighting Indian rule in the region for decades.
Pandita was also an elected official in a municipal office in Tral. “My father was serving the nation,” said Paras Pandita, the politician’s 17-year-old student son at his home in Jammu.
He had secured accommodation in the region’s main city of Srinagar and was protected by two police guards, but he went to Tral without them, a police statement said.
Manoj Sinha, New Delhi’s top administrator in Kashmir, and BJP leaders condemned the killing. “Terrorists will never succeed in their nefarious designs, and those responsible for such heinous acts shall be brought to justice,” Sinha said in a tweet.
Rebels in Indian-controlled Kashmir have been fighting the central government for decades. Suspected militants carried out a string of deadly attacks last year on members of Bharatiya Janata Party in Kashmir. Among those killed was a top BJP politician and his father and brother, who were also party members.
Meanwhile, a man was killed in an exchange of gunfire inside a counterinsurgency police camp in Tral town early Thursday, police said, calling him a “terror operative.”
According to a statement, the police said Mohammed Amin Malik snatched an automatic rifle from an officer during his interrogation and fired at him, leaving the officer critically wounded late Wednesday.
Police said they brought Malik’s mother to the camp and tried to persuade Malik to surrender but he refused and intermittently fired at police throughout the night. The statement said police later engaged him in a gunfight and killed him.
