SRINAGAR: Three days after going missing, the body of an armyman was recovered from central Kashmir’s Budgam district in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday. IGP Kashmir said the body of Sameer Ahmad Malla, who had gone missing from his residence at Lokipora village in Budgam on Monday, was recovered from Khag area in the same district on Thursday.
He said injury or bullet mark was found on his body. “Investigation in the case is going on vigorously and the circumstances leading to his death are being probed from all angles. We are looking into both aspects — the militancy angle and crime murder,” IGP said.
Malla, a soldier of J&K Light Infantry, was posted in Jammu and was visiting home on leave to celebrate the birth of his second child. In September last year, the decomposed body of a missing soldier, Shakir Manzoor Wagay, was recovered in Kulgam district in south Kashmir.
3 militants killed
Three militants including a Pakistani were killed in two separate encounters with security forces in Srinagar and south Kashmir’s Pulwama Thursday. IGP Kumar said a Pakistani militant of TRF was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Hazratbal area of Srinagar.
The motive of militants was to snatch weapons from the security guard at the revered Hazratbal shrine, he said. Kumar said the slain Pakistanis, Manzoor alias Haider alias Hamza, was active in Srinagar for last six months.
Dubious links
Malla’s role had come under probe in 2018 for allegedly driving Major Leetul Gogoi and a girl to a local hotel. Gogoi was awar-ded army chief’s ‘Commendation Card’ in April 2018 weeks after he tied a villager to bonnet of a jeep and paraded him