Srinagar, India: Indian forces captured a Pakistani militant on Wednesday after a deadly attack on a military convoy in the disputed Kashmir region, Indian officials said.
The accusation could further raise tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours following a recent attack on an Indian police station, in which seven people were killed, and intermittent clashes on their disputed border in Kashmir.
A group of militants attacked an Indian army convoy in the south of Jammu and Kashmir state earlier on Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding eight.
The militants fled into forest, taking three passers-by hostage. Soldiers later stormed a hilltop school where they were holed up, killing two of them and capturing one, officials said.
“In our preliminary questioning, he has said he is from Faisalabad, Pakistan,” Danish Rana, inspector general of police, told reporters. He identified the militant as Usman, 22.
“We are going to find out what route he has taken, what was the target,” he said.
"It's fun doing this," said Usman, who was captured alive after an attack on a Border Security Force (BSF) convoy in Jammu and Kashmir's Udhampur on Wednesday.
Usman, who was also identified as Naved by news agency PTI, said he was a resident of Faislabad in Pakistan.
After his capture, he told the media that he entered the Jammu region 12 days ago along with another militant, who was identified as Momin Khan. Khan was killed in retaliatory fire by the BSF.
"I came to kill Hindus," said Usman, dressed in a dark blue shirt and brown trousers, with a relaxed posture.
Last week, gunmen stormed a police station and killed seven people in India’s Punjab state, south of Kashmir. India said the gunmen had come from Pakistan, according to an analysis of a GPS tracking device they carried.
The government had ordered security forces to try to take the militants holed up in the police station alive to nail down evidence of their identities. But the men were killed in the daylong operation.
“Taking a man alive is a significant breakthrough. We need to know who these people are,” said A S Dulat, former head of India’s external spy agency.
Pakistan rejected the assertion that the gunmen involved in the Punjab attack came from Pakistan, calling it “unsubstantiated and unwarranted”.
There was no immediate word from Pakistan on the gunman captured on Wednesday.
