NSG frees hostages after 30-hour drama

Later, they fired three rockets into the building, killing the militant believed to be from the Lahore-based Lashkar-e-Toiba outfit. Another militant had been shot dead yesterday by BSF men when he tried to escape. Five BSF men were injured in that exchange of fire.

The body of the second militant has not been recovered leading to speculation in Srinagar that the BSF gave him “safepassage.” BSF officers deny this. “He was blown to pieces,” BSF Inspector General (Baramulla) A S Mangat said.

Officers said two of the three rockets were fired right into a rectangular opening which jutted out between the roof and the false ceiling of the flats. The militant was hiding here. BSF officers made it clear that the account of the operation was given to them by the NSG. They were too far away from the scene to witness it.

The firing damaged the interiors of the two-room flats, portions of the false roof collapsed on to the furniture. Window panes were shattered and the walls bore bullet-marks. BSF officers said the hostages, taken to the hospital after the rescue mission, were too traumatised to speak to any one. They went without food and the children were denied water during the crisis, they said.

The cluster of six housing blocks where the militants struck is located on the periphery of the BSF complex, at the bottom of a hill. The Maddar Complex — which also houses the BSF’sBandipore sector Headquarters — was constructed many years ago when nobody thought that locating flats at its edge would be a security risk, officers said.

They said that the complex was in pitch darkness on that Tuesday night: Power supply had been cut off after a storm snapped cables.

The militants first fired shots into the ground-floor flat of a constable. His wife was killed and he was injured in the leg. When the DIG, who was in his house a couple of hundred yards away, heard the gunshots, he alerted a few other officers on the phone. The DIG then walked up to the housing cluster. He was shot in the head from the first-floor window, where the militants had apparently taken position.

A sub inspector who had taken one of the injured away foR medical treatment was shot when he returned to the block. Another officer’s body was found only the next morning, as a cordon operation was set into motion. By then the militants had taken over the two-storey block of four flats.

After sunrise yesterday,there was intermittent firing. There was a shoot-out around noon when an escaping militant was shot dead. Around 5 pm, the NSG arrived at the campus, and two-and-half hours later took charge of the operations.

At 9.30 pm, the NSG men were fired at from the housing block. There was more firing around midnight, and again around 5.30 this morning. Around 1.30 am, the NSG commandos mounted the rescue operation, firing at the roof of the building and simultaneously pulling out the hostages. The commandos climbed up ladders to pull the hostages out.

Asked how the militant did not end up shooting at the hostages when the operation was on, Mangat said the heavy firing was meant to divert his attention.

An NSG officer was fired at when the commandos tried to enter the building after the hostages were evacuated. Three rockets were then fired into the building from a rocket-launcher which the NSG borrowed from other security forces. Later, while combing the area, the BSF found a grenade-launcher and a dozenrocket-propelled grenades left behind by the militants from a ditch. One of the militants had apparently scribbled Lashkar-e-Toiba on a wall.

With the officers avoiding the press in Srinagar and Bandipore for two days, rumours did the rounds. Yesterday, reporters were barred from travelling on the Sopore-Bandipore road. And for hours, reporters camped at the gate of the BSF complex at Maddar with no official offering to brief them.