Since January, two dozen policemen in the state have been killed in terrorist attacks.
The Jammu and Kashmir police has been in the line of fire after the Army started its Operation All Out in south Kashmir post Burhan Wani’s killing in 2016.
Eid celebrations could not be held in many villages of south Kashmir as on the eve of Eid, three cops were killed by terrorists when they had come to their respective villages to celebrate the festival with their families.
State Director General of Police, S.P. Vaid, while expressing grief on the killing of his cops said that they were killed because they had violated the advisory issued to them not to go to their homes without protection and prior information.
Talking to The Sunday Guardian, he said that the police has been issuing advisories to its cops and officers that they should not move without escort or protection into the terrorist infested villages.
According to the data released by the state police recently, two dozen policemen got killed in Kashmir during the current year.
Many of them, according to the police data, were killed while not being on active duty. The Special Operation Group of J&K police has been on the forefront in the anti-terrorism operations, inciting reprisal attacks by terrorists.
According to government data, in the series of anti-terrorism operations, the police with the help of the CRPF have killed 126 terrorists in 2018, more than half of them in south Kashmir.
The terrorists had in the recent past issued repeated warnings to the locals to resign from the state police.
According to the local reports, 26 cops resigned from the different districts of south Kashmir—most of them were Special Police Officers. In Tral, reports said that nine SPOs resigned and returned to their homes and to their families after militants issued a fresh warning to the SPOs while setting free a kidnapped SPO from the same town.
Inspector General of State Police, S.P. Pani told the media that they were working on some leads regarding the killing of cops. He said that very soon these cases would be cracked and culprits would be hunted down.
Meanwhile, the families of the slain cops, while narrating their ordeal, told the media that they were killed by the terrorists without any prior warning.
The family of slain cop Yaqoob Shah, told the media that he was killed in the presence of his three-year-old daughter on the road.
Similarly, the family of state police inspector Mohammed Ashraf Dar told the media that terrorists killed him at his home with blood splattering on his daughter’s clothes.
His wife said that she, along with her daughter and two sons, were still in shock and could not even peep outside their room on Eid.
In the native villages of these policemen, hundreds of people expressed their solidarity with the bereaved families and held protests against such killings by the terrorists on the eve of Eid.