Udhampur, July 16
In a pre-dawn attack militants stormed the house of a Village Defence Committee (VDC) member and killed his elder brother and niece in Doda district. Wife of the VDC member also received severe injuries.

Two persons, including a nine-year-old girl were killed in the attack, senior superintendent of police (SSP) Doda, Manohar Singh said adding that teams had been despatched to track down the terrorists involved in the crime.

Reports said some militants entered Dalhal village,14 km from Doda, and knocked at the door of Mukesh Kumar's house. As militants told the inmates they were security personnel, Mukesh's brother Devraj opened the door. The militants barged into the house and resorted to indiscriminate firing on the inmates with sophisticated weapons.

They sprayed bullets on nine-year-old Manjoo Devi, daughter of Devraj, who was sleeping. Both father and daughter died on the spot.

Militants also fired some shots at Reeva Devi, wife of Mukesh, as the couple was sleeping in a nearby room. In the meantime, Mukesh took out his riffle and retaliated the attack.For more than 30 minutes Mukesh exchanged fire with militants. In the meantime, after hearing the sound of the firing, security personnel rushed to the spot, but the militants slipped away from the site.

Security forces shifted the injured to the hospital and started a search operation in the upper reaches to track down the militants.

Meanwhile, members of the VDCs have expressed resentment over the non-serious and casual approach of the authorities towards solving their genuine problems. VDCs, which have been repeatedly becoming target of the militants, have been demanding sophisticated weapons to take on militants effectively, but nothing has been done so far.

Villagers recalled that after the Kulhand massacre on April 30, 2006, Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had promised sophisticated weapons to VDCs in far-flung areas.

Mukesh Kumar alone fought with six militants and foiled their attempt to execute another massacre at Dalhal village, which is just 20 km from Kulhand, where 20 Hindus were killed on April 30, 2006.

Impressed by the bravery of Mukesh, the local administration has decided to recommend him for the bravery award and announced to recruit him in the police.

“He alone foiled the militant attempt to kill family members of other VDCs. I will recruit him in the police'', SSP Manohar Singh told The Tribune. 

Jammu, July 16
Having boycotted the three round-table conferences organised by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for a solution to the Kashmir problem, top separatist leaders, including Hurriyat Conference chief Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, are all set to go to Washington to participate in the two- day conference convened by the Kashmir American Council (KAC).

From Kashmir who have confirmed participation are Yasin Malik, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), and Shabir Shah, president of the J&K Democratic Freedom Party, said the KAC. Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, MLA of the CPM, will also go there.

The separatists will utilise the opportunity to discuss with Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) ,various issues, who will also participate in the conference. The conference is being held in Washington on July 26 and 27.

Mohammad Akbar Choudhary, a minister in POK, Mohammad Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s ambassador in the USA, Ved Bhasin, senior journalist of J&K and Prof Kamal Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University, will also address the conference.

According to Ghulam Nabi Fai, executive director of the Washington-based Kashmiri American Council, primary objective of this conference was to explore all possible options to settle the issue of Kashmir to the satisfaction of all three parties- India, Pakistan and, in particular, the people of all regions of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

He said the Kashmiri Americans noted with satisfaction that the leadership in India and Pakistan had realised the status-quo in Kashmir was not an option. He, however, hoped the two governments fully recognise there could be no peaceful negotiated settlement without full and active participation of the legitimate and accredited leadership of the people of Kashmir.

Udhampur, July 16
To train medical staff of the armed forces in stress management, the Command Hospital, Northern Command, will organise a nursing education programme on “newer approaches in psychiatry”, from July 23 to August 1. This training programme assumes importance as suicide cases among soldiers deployed in violence-hit state of Jammu and Kashmir, have been increasing.

The programme is to understand, manage and treat properly the stress affecting personal life and services of the soldiers deployed in conflict zone.

According to a handout issued by the PRO Defence, Northern Command, 30 nursing officers from the command zone were attending this programme for 10 days. The approach is multi-disciplinary with a training team comprising psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric trained nurses, legal and administrative experts from this command and outside who will speak and share views in their areas of expertise relating to emergencies in psychiatry and management thereof.

Rapid globalisation coupled with social changes have exerted tremendous stress on individual psyche. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), burden of psychiatric illnesses across the globe is on the increase. Considering the role of the armed forces in the face of insurgency, natural calamities, civil unrest and UN peacekeeping, there is a need to understand the stress affecting service personnel and their families. 

Azmatabad (Rajouri), July 16
For the past four years, not a single day has passed when Gulzar Begum did not remember her missing son Muhammad Shafiq. Taking care of her two sons (four, including Shafiq and Muhammad Rafiq, who along with their father, are in Saudi Arabia) and a daughter, in the absence of her husband Munir Hussain, Gulzar Begum hopes he will be back one day.

Muhammad Shafiq (then 12-year-old), resident of Chakoori in Azmatabad, was a student of class VIII of Government High School here. Even though, he was suffering from some psychiatric problem, his family made all efforts to get him best possible medicare with a hope that he will recover soon. While he was responding to treatment and showed signs of recovery, on March 23 ,2003, while he was returning from the marriage of his brother, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

"He had gone to attend his elder brother's marriage. The last we heard about him was that after having dinner at the bride's house, he was on his way back," Begum said. "Initially we thought he might have gone to some relative's house. Three days after he didn't return, we lodged a missing report at Thannamandi police station. Even the police tried its best to locate him, but failed".

Begum, while ruling out that Shafiq might have been lured by militants to join some outfit, said he was a coward and would not go out at night alone. "He was a coward child and he used to ask me to accompany him to bathroom outside. On the other hand, he was a very shy child and wouldn't trust anyone easily," said Begum, who after the disappearance of her son has not been keeping well. "Even though our relatives and neighbours keep on saying he will not return and might have been killed, I tell them I will die only after I see him returning home".

Station House Officer, Thannamandi, Javed Malik said in a majority of the cases wherein persons have gone missing in the area, they have either crossed over to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for arms training or their whereabouts were not known.

Sources revealed since 1990, 27 persons had gone missing in Rajouri district. The list of those disappeared suggested that a majority of those who had disappeared were teenagers in the age group of 10-15 years.

Srinagar, July 16
In a joint operation, the state police and the Army busted an ammunition dump at Pattan and recovered war-like stores from it.

The police said the Pattan police, along with 29 RR, raided the house of Ghulam Mohammed Teli at Khour Sher Abad and recoverd a large quantity of arms and ammunition from it.

The recoveries include six AK 47 rifles, three AK 74 rifles, 24 AK magazines, 11 Chinese pistols, 24 magazines, 4400 rounds of AK rifles,147 pistol rounds, 60 kg of explosives, seven rocket launchers, besides grenades and IEDs. — TNS