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1 day ago
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ARTICLE AD BOX
The terrorists were later found in Panjtirthi forests of Billawar on the night of March 31. Although this led to yet another encounter, the fugitives managed to escape.
When a father-son duo moved to Samba from Udhampur earlier this month, they expected the usual hardship that came with moving to a new place. What they didn’t expect was that they would end up at a police station on suspicion of having “terror links” – all because they had allegedly reactivated a SIM card suspected to be used by terrorists.
According to police sources, the family, originally from Khabbal village in Udhampur, had moved to the Samba district a fortnight ago fearing threat to their lives from terrorists. In Samba, they worked at a factory in Bari Brahmana.
Two days ago, the men reactivated an old SIM card, which brought the police to their doorstep. According to the police, the SIM had previously been in a phone that two terrorists took from them at gunpoint on the night of April 2, when they knocked on the family’s door demanding food.
Sources said that before they left, the fugitives had handed over the phone’s SIM card to the family. Following the incident, village residents lodged a complaint with the police, prompting forces to mark the SIM card as suspicious and conduct a search operation in the area.
Meanwhile, the family moved to Samba, where the SIM was activated, bringing them to the police’s notice, one police officer said, adding that the two were allowed to leave after an hour of questioning.
Significantly, the terrorists appear to belong to the same group that had fled from the forests near Panjtirthi area of Ramkote in Kathua district after an encounter with the security forces on March 27. Two terrorists and four policemen were killed in that encounter.
The terrorists were later found in Panjtirthi forests of Billawar on the night of March 31. Although this led to yet another encounter, the fugitives managed to escape.
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