New Delhi: An inspector of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) died of a bullet injury after terrorists opened fired at a joint patrolling party of the force and Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) during an operation in the Udhampur district Monday.
Sources in the security establishment told ThePrint that Inspector Kuldeep Kumar, who hailed from Haryana’s Jind district and who was deployed with the 187 battalion of the force in the northern Jammu region of the union territory, had been killed in the firing.
“During area domination patrol at Chill, Dudu, exchange of fire took place between terrorists and joint parties of JKP and CRPF. In the encounter, one Inspector of CRPF suffered bullet injuries & has attained martyrdom. Operation continues,” Udhampur Police said in a statement.
Reinforcements have been sent to the Chill area of the Dudu-Basantgarh sub-division of the district. Sources in the security establishment said that the site of the incident was nearly 70 kilometres deep inside the forest, where a camp for security officials was built in July.
“The joint patrolling party was going to man the base camp in the area built after the April encounter in the same Basantgarh area when terrorists opened fire on the security officers,” a security source told ThePrint.
The April encounter in the same area had resulted in the death of a Village Defence Guard (VDG) at the Chochru Gala heights in Basantgarh area of Udhampur district.
The fresh terror attack on the security forces comes five days after the Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held a high-level meeting with top brass of the national security establishment, including National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi, and Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Tapan Deka.
ThePrint had earlier reported an increase in attacks on security forces in the Jammu region over the last few years and that nearly 40 terrorists belonging to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) had managed to infiltrate the region in the last one year.
Equipped with American M4 rifles, night vision binoculars and telescopic lenses, and encrypted radio sets, these terrorists split into smaller groups and carry out ambush attacks against security forces in areas surrounded by deep forest and tough terrain.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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