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The pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik was on Monday detained by the police while on his way to Kupwara to meet the family of the 70-year-old Habibullah Khan, who was killed by the army last week.
The army had said that they had killed a militant and recovered arms and ammunition from him in the Rainawari forest area in north Kashmir's Kupwara district.
However, three days later, Raj Mohammad, the son of the slain 'militant' came forward to claim the body maintaining that Habibuallh Khan was the head of their family and had taken to begging to supplement his family's meager income.
Raj told police that his father had not returned home for many days.
Meanwhile, a senior police officer said Malik was detained near Mirgund along with some of his associates.
The body of Habibullah Khan was handed over to his next of kin on Saturday after the district magistrate ordered its exhumation.
The police have already registered a case of murder and the investigations are on.
On Saturday, defence spokesman Lieutenant Colonel J S Brar in a fresh statement said that 'the deceased had been exploited by a group of terrorists either as a human shield or as a guide and the arms and ammunition recovered were possibly dropped by the fleeing terrorists.'