SHO Feroz Dar, five Kashmiri policemen were killed in planned LeT ambush

New Delhi, June 20 : When the Jammu and Kashmir Police killed a top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander, Junaid Mattoo, and his associate in Arwani village of south Kashmir on June 16, no one would have thought that retaliation would come the very same day.
In what seemed to be a reprisal attack, LeT militants attacked a police jeep and killed SHO Feroz Ahmad Dar along with his five associates, and disfigured their bodies.
But intelligence reports have a different story to tell.
According to intelligence sources, the police party was led to a “well planned trap” that was brutally executed by the LeT militants with the help of local over-ground workers or OGWs.
“Dar had also received a threat to his life a few days back from some OGWs but he didn’t pay heed to that”, sources privy to the development said. The movement of SHO Dar and his escort was conveyed to the militants by local sympathisers and the department was in the process of identifying them, the sources told IANS.
“It looks like a conspiracy hatched by LeT Commander Bashir Lashkar and the local OGWs to eliminate the ‘people friendly officer’,” Senior Superintendent of Police in Anantnag, Zubair Khan, told IANS over phone.
Deputy Inspector General of south Kashmir S.P. Pani too seconded the views of SSP Khan and said the culprits would be nabbed soon.
“We are looking into the conspiracy that was hatched between Lashkar and its associates and, more importantly, we are investigating what was the intention – the motive behind this attack,” DIG Pani told IANS over phone.
So who was Feroz Ahmed Dar?
In 2010, when the Valley was burning amid the Hurriyat headed unrest, Dar of the Sangam area of south Kashmir joined the Jammu and Kashmir Police as sub-inspector. A year later, he got married. He has two daughters, Addah (5) and Simran (3).
Amidst the tragedy, the Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti misinformed the assembly on June 17 about his status. Expressing “pain” over the killing of six policemen in Anantnag, Mehbooba Mufti regretted that the slain SHO was a “bachelor who died so young before his marriage.” The chief minister, who also holds the home ministry portfolio, should have known better.