Cop booked in Kishtwar missing girls' case

A Station House officer has been booked on charges of wrongful confinement in connection with missing of two teenaged girls from a police station in Gulabgarh town of Kishtwar district in Jammu and Kashmir.

After two days of violence in the area, normalcy returned on Thursday with shops and market places opening.

"A case has been registered against the SHO in this regard. A probe has also been ordered against him," Inspector General of Police (IGP), Jammu Zone, Ashok Gupta told PTI.

Basantgarh SHO Inspector Farooq Ahmed Wani has also been shifted and attached with District Police Lines, Kishtwar, he said.

Gupta, who reviewed the situation along with Jammu Divisional Commissioner Pawan Kotwal, said that one member each of the families of the two girls will be recruited as Special Police Officers, besides getting ex-gratia.

District Commissioner G R Baghat and SP Dr Haseeb Moghal are camping in the Basantgarh town to monitor the law and order situation in the area and to expedite the inquiry.

Five policemen were among 15 persons injured when a group of agitators, protesting the missing of two teenage girls from a police station, clashed with the police in Gulabgarh town of Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district on Wednesday.

The clash took place when police resorted to lathicharge and teargas shells to control over 2,000 protesters, mostly youngsters and students, who were marching towards the police station chanting anti-police and anti-government slogans demanding suspension and arrest of SHO Farooq Ahmed Wani on Wednesday.

The protests were triggered after two teenaged girls, held by police in connection with a sex racket case, allegedly went missing from a police station in Gulabgarh on Monday night.

As the situation become tense, Divisional Commissioner (Jammu Zone) Pawan Kotwal, Jammu IGP Ashok Gupta and DIG Maneesh Sinha flew to Gulabgarh on Wednesday and reviewed the law and order situation in the mountain-locked town, Kishtwar Deputy Commissioner R Baghat said.

According to police, on July 12 they arrested a 22-year-old boy in a "compromising position" with two girls aged 19 and 17 years. While the boy was booked, police claimed to have released the girls on the same day.

However, the parents of the girls claimed that they did not reach home.