Poonch, August 14: Ruling out the involvement of any other police or Army personnel in the recent fake encounter in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir, the arrested SPO and Territorial Army jawan on Saturday said they had engineered the killing for monetary and other gains.
“We had engineered this encounter, in which one civilian was killed, for post, rewards and money,” arrested Special Police Officer (SPO) of the Special Operations Group (SOG) of J and K Police Noor Hussain told a press conference in Surankote area here.
The other accused and TA jawan Abdul Majeed said: “There was no involvement of any officer or official of Army and police in the encounter.”
Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Poonch, Ashkoor Ahmed Wani produced the accused SPO and jawan before mediapersons in Surankote on Saturday.
Majeed said SPOs are regularised as constables in the police force as reward for killing a militant in an encounter while TA jawans are given money by the Army for the same. “To get these benefits, we engineered this encounter,” he said.
The duo said they misled the police and Army while carrying out the encounter. They had claimed on August 8 to have killed LeT commander Abu Usman in an encounter in Dobawali Doka forests in Surankote here. However, it was later found that the duo had killed a civilian.
Talking to reporters, the SSP said two families have claimed the body of the killed civilian. “We have taken the blood samples of the members of the two families and these samples will be sent for DNA test to Central Forensic Laboratory at Chandigarh on Monday,” he said.
While further investigation is on, the SSP said, involvement of any other security personnel in the case was ruled out. PTI
