Anantnag: A senior police official was found dead, his body riddled with bullets, a little distance from his home here in the Samboora area of South Kashmir’s Pulwama district. The killing is the latest, in a string of such killings, by unidentified gunmen here in South Kashmir in particular.

The slain has been identified as Farooq Ahmad Mir, son of Abdul Gani Mir, a Sub-Inspector of the police force. He was presently posted at IRP 23 Batallion and was home on leave while he was killed.

“He was serving his last years in the police force and has been killed for sins only known to his killers,” Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Vijay Kumar, has said.

A senior police official from the area said that Mir left his home Friday evening to tend to his paddy fields located nearby. “He did not return till late evening leaving his family worried,” the police official said.

The family, the official said, went out and started looking for him. “Later in the night, the family found his body riddled with bullets, and lying in a paddy field,” the official said.

He said that the daily intimated police and a team were immediately rushed to the spot. “He had multiple bullet wounds. The body was sent for medico-legal formalities immediately and a case was lodged in this regard. An investigation has been taken up,” the official said.

Sources in the police said that Mir was being followed by militants and shot him dead soon as he ventured a little farther from his home. “Preliminary investigation has revealed this much. The killers will soon be identified,” a highly placed police source said.

A wreath-laying ceremony, attended by senior police officials and family members of the slain, was held in the Lethpora area of the Pulwama district. Later the slain SI was laid to rest at his ancestral graveyard in Samboora.

Mir’s killing was the latest one in many such killings carried out by unidentified gunmen across South Kashmir and even Srinagar. A policeman was shot at and killed right outside his house in the Gadoora area of Pulwama district on May 13.

He was home on leave and had ventured out to drop his kids to the school bus.

Before that, two men from the Railway police were shot at and killed right outside Kakapora Railway station, here in the Pulwama district.

Targeted killings have extended well beyond policemen. Kashmiri Pandits, non-locals, and locals with a political leaning have been targeted and killed by unidentified gunmen.

In 2022, more than 22 such killings have already taken place in less than 6 months. Even as the police have been maintaining that the killers of most of these have been neutralized in gunfights, the killings have continued, nevertheless.

More than 105 militants have so far been killed in the first less than 6 months of the year. The last week of May and the first fortnight of June have been particularly bloody, with around 30 militants being killed in different gunfights during this period.

Suhail A Shah