Bodies of slain VDGs recovered; hunt on for terrorists in Kishtwar

Security forces on Friday recovered the bodies of two village defence guards (VDG) a day after they were abducted and shot dead by terrorists in the Kishtwar district of Jammu amid protests, shutdown, and outrage over the killings.

Officials, meanwhile, said that security forces were conducting a massive cordon-and-search operation in Kishtwar and using drones, sniffer dogs and helicopters to track the terrorists behind the killings.

On Thursday morning, Nazir Ahmad and Kuldeep Kumar, both residents of Ohli-Kuntwara village, took their cattle for grazing in the Munzla Dhar forest. They did not return till late evening, prompting a joint search operation by the army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and police.

Amid the frantic search, Kashmir Tigers, an offshoot of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), said that it had abducted and killed the two men.

“Some ignorant people are joining the VDGs… They should learn from today’s incident and not be a part of VDGs. Otherwise, they will also meet the same fate,” the terror group said in a letter, as it also shared a photo of the bodies of the two blindfolded men.

Shortly after the two went missing, security forces found their bodies near a rivulet in the Pondgwari area.

“The bodies of the two VDGs have been recovered from the jungle by a team of police and army,” Anand Jain, Jammu’s additional director general of police (ADGP), said.

A Jammu and Kashmir Police officer said the forces were moving cautiously as they could not rule out the possibility of the bodies being booby-trapped. “It took nearly six hours for the security forces to trek the hilly terrain from the nearest road to reach the upper reaches of Ohli Kuntwara where the terrorists killed the two men in a jungle. The bodies are being brought back and will be taken to their respective houses,” the officer said on condition of anonymity.

VDGs were first floated in the 1990s, during the peak of militancy in the restive region. They were disbanded in 2000 but revived in August 2022 in the wake of a series of attacks in the UT. The CRPF was given the responsibility to provide arms training to VDGs, consisting of local village volunteers and police officers, in an attempt to counter terror attacks in their areas. There are 4,125 VDGs in the UT, according to the latest official figures.

The killings of the two men came against the backdrop of a string of terror strikes and encounters in J&K after its first elected government since the revocation of Article 370 in 2019 was sworn in on October 16. On Sunday, 12 civilians were injured after terrorists lobbed a grenade in a busy Srinagar market.

A day earlier, three terrorists, including a top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander, were killed after parallel encounters broke out in Anantnag and Srinagar. It was the first major gunbattle between terrorists and forces in Srinagar in two years. On October 24, two soldiers and two civilian porters were killed after terrorists ambushed an army convoy in the Baramulla district of Kashmir. Four days before that, seven people were killed when terrorists opened fire on a construction site camp in the Ganderbal district of the Valley.

“Deeply saddened & concerned by the attack that resulted in the deaths of Kuldeep Kumar & Nazeer Ahmed Padder of Kuntwara in Kishtwar, members of the local village defence committee. The terrorists killed two innocent men who had taken their livestock to graze. I condemn this attack unequivocally & send my condolences to the families. At the same time, I expect the security forces to move quickly to plug any gaps in our counter-terror grid & ensure that attacks like this stop completely,” J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah said in a post on X.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national general secretary Tarun Chugh called the killings an “attack on humanity”. “It is not just an attack on innocent lives but also on humanity. We will face such people firmly, and we have full faith in the security forces,” he said.

Ahmad and Kumar’s killings triggered protests across Jammu and a complete shutdown in Kishtwar as business establishments largely remained closed.

“This kind of incident has not happened in this area for a long time. The victims were grazing their cattle when terrorists kidnapped and killed them. This is an act of cowardice. We cannot tolerate this. The people stand firmly against terrorism. We demand a massive operation to eliminate the terrorists involved in this act,” Kuldeep Singh, a resident of Drabshalla village, said.