Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, a decorated commanding officer of a Rashtriya Rifles battalion, along with a company commander, two other soldiers and a policeman laid down their lives in a fierce encounter with terrorists at Chanjimulla area of Handwara in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district last week.
The two terrorists killed in the encounter, one of whom identified by J&K police as top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Haidar, were part of a large group of Pakistani infiltrators who had sneaked into Kashmir through the Wadarbala-Rajwara forests in Kupwara last month, sources said. Colonel Sharma and his team reached the site after receiving reports that civilians were being held hostage in a house by terrorists. In the ensuing encounter, some civilians managed to get out while some were extricated by the Army.
Colonel Sharma, the CO of 21 Rashtriya Rifles, with his company commander Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar, Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and J&K police sub-inspector Sageer Ahmad Pathan Qazi, were returning from a massive combing operation underway in the Wadarbala-Rajwara forests when they were informed that two to four terrorists had taken refuge in the nearby Chanjimulla hamlet.
“Colonel Sharma and his small party were ahead of the security forces still deployed in the forests when they got intelligence inputs that the terrorists, clad in combat fatigues, had taken civilians hostage in one of the houses,” an officer said. A firefight erupted around 3.45pm with the two terrorists, who were apparently hiding in separate but adjacent houses. In the ensuing gun-battle, some civilians fled the houses, while the Army said a few others were “extricated successfully” by the security forces.
The security forces, which had by then cordoned off the area, blasted one of the houses with heavy weapons responding to the gunfire. “One terrorist was killed there,” a source said. “But the other terrorist was hiding in the adjacent two-storey house with a cow-shed. He started firing and lobbying grenades as soon as Col Sharma’s team entered that house. There was a heavy volume of gunfire,” the source said. Col Sharma and his team then “lost contact” with security forces, including elite para commandos, who had taken positions outside.
