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Tension grips Leh following scuffle

The sources said the cops objected to parking of a vehicle by the Buddhist in an unauthorised place. Apparently, angered by this, the Buddhist shouted at the policemen triggering a heated exchange of words.

As onlookers gathered at the place, some more cops joined their colleagues and fired in the air to disperse the swelling crowd, the sources said.

Prominent Buddhist leader and member of the National Commission for Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes Lama Lobzang has demanded immediate withdrawal of the state police from the Himalayan district.

In a letter to Union Home Minister L K Advani, he alleged that the state police had been 'letting loose repression' in Leh at a time when elections to the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council were round the corner.

He claimed that the state government was 'panicking because it sees no chance for the ruling party nominees to win any seat in the council'.

Seeking immediate intervention by the Centre, he urged the home minister to ensure that police was not encouraged to 'communalise the situation'.

Meanwhile, a former district commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen was among nine militants killed in separate incidents even as militants damaged a security vehicle in a landmine explosion and set ablaze a school building in Jammu and Kashmir since Wednesday, an official spokesman said in Srinagar on Thursday.

Former district commander of the Hizb Peer Abdul Gani was shot dead by unidentified gunmen at Flood Colony in Baramulla district of north Kashmir on Wednesday evening, the spokesman said.

He said three foreign mercenaries affiliated with the Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit were killed by security forces in an encounter at Badrakote forest in the frontier district of Kupwara on Wednesday night.

A big cache of arms and ammunition, including three AK assault rifles, nine rockets, an anti-tank mine, 56 grenades, 35 detonators and 15 kilograms of explosives were recovered from the killed militants, the spokesman said.

Security forces also gunned down a Pakistani militant, Mohammad Azim alias Tariq, associated with the Al-Badr outfit in an encounter at Khurhama village in Ganderbal area on the outskirts of Srinagar on Thursday, the spokesman said.

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