Militants kill cable operator in Kashmir

A cable operator was shot dead by unidentified militants in south Kashmir’s Shopian district on Sunday evening.

Reports said two unidentified militants shot at Hilal Ahmad Malik outside District Hospital, Shopian around 8 pm. Malik, owner of a cable network, was rushed to Srinagar but succumbed to his injuries on the way. He had received bullets in his abdomen and legs.

The motive behind the killing could not be ascertained immediately. No militant outfit owned responsibility for the killing. Immediately after the attack army, police and CRPF cordoned off the area and launched a hunt to nab the attackers, reports said.

In the late 1990s, militants attacked several cable TV operators in Srinagar asking them to wind up their operations. The militant groups including Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen claimed that cable TV programmes were obscene.

However, after the intervention of separatist leaders, cable TV operations were resumed after remaining suspended for a fortnight. Meanwhile, police recovered a bullet-riddled body of a teenage boy from an orchard in the same district on Sunday morning.