Militants snatched an automatic rifle along with a magazine from a cop and decamped with it in south Kashmir Pulwama town on Tuesday afternoon.
The incident comes close on the heels of a string of militant attacks that left four army troopers, two militants and an employee of a telecom company dead on Monday.
A senior police officer said militants snatched an INSAS rifle from an on-duty cop posted at the district hospital in Pulwama town this afternoon along with a magazine.
They later escaped even as security forces surrounded the area for searches.
Meanwhile while expressing ‘dismay over the latest incidents of violence’ in Kashmir, minister for education, Naeem Akhtar, who is also the state government spokesman, said, “Such acts are aimed at subverting states political and economic stability.”
“The violent incidents at Tangdhar along LoC, Yaripora in district Kulgam and Sopore in district Baramulla are a grim reminder that the elements inimical to peace, are out to undermine the efforts of the democratic forces in Jammu and Kashmir which are aimed at bringing political stability and economic prosperity to the state,” an official statement said.
Akhtar said, “As the state and its people are struggling hard to cope-up with the distressing economic situation complicated by the devastating floods of September 2014, the forces inimical to peace are aiming at destabilising the situation once again to push Kashmir into perpetual suffering.”
“Violence has neither served any purpose in the past, nor is it going to serve any purpose in future,” he said and added that if anything, the ‘violence has only brought miseries to the state and its people by adding to the numbers of the orphans, widows and destitute.”
