The bullet-riddled bodies of two Special Police Officers (SPOs) who went missing in Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district have been recovered, officials said on Thursday, a day after they disappeared from a remote forested area in the upper reaches of the Chenab Valley.
The two men have been identified as Babi Chand, 57, and Rashpal Kumar, 45. Both were posted with the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the local police at Kiyar village in Dachhan, and had been deployed with the 17th Battalion of the Rashtriya Rifles at a post in the area over the last few days.
The SPOs went missing on Wednesday while travelling from their camp at Kiyar to an Army post at Dharna-Marwah, where they had been assigned rotation duty at a Temporary Operating Base. When they failed to report at the designated post, a joint search operation was launched by the Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Army's Rashtriya Rifles, involving drones and sniffer dogs across the forested upper reaches of Dachhan.
The bodies were spotted early on Thursday after the massive search, at an altitude of 8,858 feet between Deharna and Kiyar villages. Both bodies bore bullet injuries, while their service weapons — an INSAS rifle and a .303 rifle, along with magazines and ammunition — were missing from the scene. Pakistani-origin ammunition cartridges were recovered from the spot, officials said.
The two officers' mobile phones were initially reachable but were later switched off, prompting security agencies to launch the extensive search. The killings happened hours after an attack in Kulgam on November 11, in which unidentified assailants opened fire on a patrolling party of the Central Reserve Police Force, injuring three personnel.
Two BJP MLAs from Kishtwar — Sunil Sharma, also the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, and Shagun Parihar — alleged the SPOs were kidnapped by militants during patrolling in a remote forested village, calling it a "terrorist attack". The bodies were found at 8am and 9am, Parihar said. However, the police have not issued any formal statement on the incident and have not confirmed the involvement of terrorists.
The alleged attack has turned the spotlight back on the oldest militant module operating in the Dachhan-Marwah belt, led by Hizb commander Mohammad Amin, also known as Jahangir Saroori, although its involvement has not been established. The identity of those behind the killings and the circumstances in which the two officers were shot dead were not immediately known, and locals reported hearing gunshots on Wednesday.
SPOs are locally recruited personnel engaged by the Jammu and Kashmir Police to assist in security-related duties, including counter-insurgency operations and intelligence gathering. The two men were part of the Temporary Operating Bases set up by the police after increased terrorist activity in the upper reaches of Jammu and Kashmir since 2020.
Jammu and Kashmir National Conference president Farooq Abdullah called on Pakistan to end terrorism and choose dialogue to resolve outstanding issues, amid the spate of security incidents in the region, including the killing of the two officers in Kishtwar and the attack on the CRPF party in Kulgam.
Security has been beefed up across the area and the search operation continues, with forces working to trace the assailants. For the families of Babi Chand and Rashpal Kumar, and for a region that has seen a sharp rise in militant activity in its upper reaches, the recovery of the two bodies is another grim reminder of how dangerous the forested heights of Kishtwar remain.
