Srinagar: Two gunmen opened fire on Tuesday in a hospital in Kashmir where a Pakistani militant was brought for treatment, escaping with the high-profile prisoner and killing two police officers.
A manhunt is under way after the attackers stormed the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar and opened fire on police guarding Naveed Jutt, a Pakistani militant imprisoned in the restive province since 2014.
Head Constable Mushtaq Ahmad was killed in the attack that took place in the busy pre-lunch hour when the hospital, Srinagar’s main health-care facility, is crowded with patients.
His colleague, Constable Babar Ahmad, was critically injured and admitted to the hospital. However, he succumbed to his injuries a few hours later.
“It’s a very unfortunate incident and the terrorists managed to free one of their hardcore accomplices. We have sounded a red alert to nab all those involved in this crime,” said Director-General of Police S.P. Vaid.
The police team was taking six prisoners including Jhutt to the hospital for treatment, added Deputy Inspector-General (Central Kashmir) Gulam Hasan Bhat, who visited the scene of the attack.
According to eyewitness accounts, the militants opened fire as soon as Jhutt, along with five other prisoners and the police team, got off the vehicle outside the Out Patient Department of the 70-year-old hospital.
The pheran-clad militants were lying in wait in the parking lot of the hospital.
Two Lashkar militants rained bullets at the police party and fled towards downtown Srinagar.
The hospital, named after Shri Maharaja Hari Singh, the last ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, is strategically located on the banks of a tributary of the river Jehlum, with uptown Karan Nagar on one side and Nawab Bazaar in downtown Srinagar on the other.
Jhutt, a school dropout from Borevella district of Multan in the Pakistan Punjab, is believed to be involved in multiple attacks. These include an attack on the Army in Hyderpora in the city, an attack on the Silver Star hotel along the national highway outside Srinagar and three attacks on police and CRPF camps in south Kashmir.
He was arrested on August 26, 2014.
The militant had undergone intensive training and was good in handling equipment like compasses, GPS, wireless sets and mobile phones installed with Skype software, an official said.
Jammu and Kashmir police wanted to shift him along with five other prisoners from Srinagar jail to other high security jails outside the Valley but was disallowed from doing so by the sessions court on December 26, 2017.
Jutt was second in command of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group at the time of his arrest.
The group is active in Indian Kashmir, regularly staging armed assaults on the roughly half a million Indian soldiers deployed in the divided Himalayan territory.
India accuses Pakistan of arming, training and deploying militant groups, including LeT, to foment unrest in the part of Kashmir controlled by New Delhi, where many support the rebel cause.
Islamabad denies the allegations, saying it only provides diplomatic and moral support to the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination.
LeT has been blamed for a string of deadly attacks inside India, most notably the Mumbai carnage in November 2008 that left more than 160 people dead on the streets of the financial capital.
