Five soldiers were killed and five others were injured when an Army vehicle carrying them skidded off the road and rolled down into a gorge in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district. The accident occurred in the Gharoa area when the vehicle was on its way to Banoi in the district. Rescue teams have recovered five bodies. The vehicle plunged into a gorge, approximately 300-350 feet deep.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Saturday sacked six government employees, including five policemen, for their 'deep involvement in anti-national activities', officials said.
The additional troops deployed on the LoC have been successful in foiling almost all the major attempts of infiltration and terrorists have not been allowed to cross over, sources said.
Three to four terrorists are believed to have carried out the deadly attack on an Army convoy in the Gulmarg sector of Jammu and Kashmir that left four people, including two soldiers, dead, a senior police official said on Saturday.
Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi Monday said there is still a 'degree' of standoff between the Indian and Chinese militaries along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh and both sides need to sit down and firm up a broader understanding on how to calm down the situation.
'This Border-Gavaskar Trophy (series) has had the biggest Boxing Day crowd ever passing the Ashes and the series is so delicately poised now, it is living up to every hype.'
The officials said that the recently developed SH-15, a 155 mm truck-mounted howitzer gun, has also been spotted at some places along the Line of Control after it was displayed on Pakistan Day last year.
No fresh batch of Amarnath Yatra pilgrims was allowed to leave the Bhagwati Nagar base camp in Jammu for Kashmir as a precautionary measure in view of the fifth anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 on Monday, officials said.
The officials said helicopters and drones were pressed into the service to help the forces, who are also using human and technical intelligence inputs to aid the search operation which has been launched to trace and neutralise the terrorists behind the attack.
Contending that the ceasefire agreement was more important for Pakistan as it is desperately trying to come out of the "grey list" of the Financial Action Task Force, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the sincerity of Islamabad could have been gauged if they had dismantled the terror infrastructure.
Four Indian Army personnel, a Border Security Force sub-inspector and six civilians were killed while four security forces personnel and eight civilians were injured in the firing by Pakistan during the multiple ceasefire violations between Gurez and Uri sectors in Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.
This has also raised concerns over undetected infiltrations from across the Line of Control and terrorists potentially residing in the outskirts of cities and villages, they said.
The Bombay high court on Thursday quashed the Look Out Circulars (LOCs) issued against Rhea Chakraborty, her brother and father by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with its probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
India's tactical and operational response demonstrated its ability to prosecute tri-service operations, even without a formal tri-service doctrine or the higher command structure needed to coordinate it, points out Ajai Shukla.
These Army posts -- some at the highest altitude of about 12,000 feet -- are the first line of defense against the intruders in these infamous, traditional routes of infiltration. These infiltration routes converge at the mighty Shamsabari range.
For the soldiers at this frontier, it's a battle that has to be fought on two fronts -- hostile neighbour and harsh winter, which is approaching.
General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the Army's Srinagar-based 15 Corps or Chinar Corps, Lt Gen D P Pandey, said there have been some infiltration attempts, but unlike previous years they have not been 'adequately supported' by ceasefire violations.
The Mumbai police probing the Baba Siddique murder case have found that the five newly-arrested accused had demanded Rs 50 lakh for the killing, but backed out later due to disagreement over payment and also considering the Nationalist Congress Party leader's clout, officials said.
The SSP said the investigation of the matter and questioning of the infiltrator will be conducted later.
The JCO was injured in the firing at around 1.30 pm and was taken to a military hospital, where he succumbed to the injuries, they said. The civilian, Mohmmad Rashid has been shifted to GMC hospital in Jammu for specialised treatment, the officials said.
The attack, which claimed the lives of seven individuals, including a local doctor and two labourers from Bihar, has raised concerns about the unreported trend of local youths joining terrorist groups in Kashmir during this period.
It would be realistic to see India's position on the DGMOs joint statement more as 'engagement, different from dialogue', where our subsequent options could be decided depending on the realities of the situation on the ground, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
"We noticed some suspicious movement in the Hathlanga area near the LoC. The infiltrators were challenged and three of them were killed," an Army officer said.
An officer and a jawan of the army were killed in a mysterious blast near a forward post along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday, officials said.
Justice M Nagaprasanna found the allegations against the man to be trivial and, therefore, stayed the probe.
During the arguments, the CBI opposed the application saying there was likelihood of Patel fleeing from justice if he was allowed to leave the country.
The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister said restoring the ceasefire that was agreed upon and implemented by former prime minister A B Vajpayee and ex-Pakistan president General Pervez Musharaf is a good place to start.
A top police official said that Pakistan is trying to infiltrate terrorists along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir even during the winters when most of the passes and mountainous areas along the border are covered in heavy snow.
The weekly service was suspended on August 19 after authorities in PoK did not respond to a call from their Indian counterparts to let a bus get across the LoC.
Indian troops gave a befitting reply, resulting in heavy damage to Pakistan's army posts and casualties of its soldiers
The shelling from across the border started in Nowshera sector around 12.30 pm, ending over 12-hour-long lull in the border skirmishes which intensified after India's pre-emptive strikes on Jaish-e-Mohammed's terror camps at Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan on Tuesday.
In the about two-minute video, at least four bodies could be seen, which the Army sources said, were of Pakistani intruders.
Security forces on Tuesday morning gunned down two terrorists holed up in a forest area near a village in the Akhnoor sector in Jammu and Kashmir, taking the number of militants killed in the 27-hour-long gunfight near the Line of Control (LoC) to three, officials said.
While the elderly woman was killed in heavy shelling by Pakistan in Poonch district of the Jammu region, two civilians were injured in Tangdhar sector of north Kashmir's Kupwara district, they said.
MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said Pakistani forces have continued to engage in unprovoked ceasefire violations, often from civilian areas, to support infiltration of terrorists across the LoC.
The terrorists holed up in the Kashmir valley have been facing acute shortage of arms and ammunition and they are desperately looking for some help from across the border for the same.
There was no firing or hostile action by any side during the incident which occurred between 9.45 am and 10 am, they said
In his speech during the Army day parade, he also said that there has been 44 per cent increase in ceasefire violations that reflects Pakistan's sinister design.
The killing of Naik Rajib Thapa, 34, raised the death toll in the cross-border firing in the past week to four -- three soldiers and one civilian.
Singh, who was accompanied by Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat and Army Chief Gen MM Naravane, visited the North Hill post and was apprised about the situation at the border by senior officials.
