Three militants, including top TRF commander, killed in Srinagar shootout

Three militants, including Mehran Shalla, a top commander of The Resistance Front, were killed in a brief shootout in the Rambagh area of Srinagar around 5:15 pm on Wednesday, according to the Jammu and Kashmir Police. However, eyewitnesses claimed that the armed forces, some of them in plain clothes, intercepted a Santro and Wagon R, asked the occupants to get out of the vehicles and fired at them.

"The terrorists were traveling in a car which was asked to stop by the Naka party. The terrorists didn't stop and instead opened fire at the Naka party which retaliated, triggering an encounter in which three terrorists of TRF were killed," read the official police statement.

Within minutes of the shooting on the busy road beneath a flyover, police removed the bodies from the spot. Blood was splattered all around. Locals at the spot, mostly women, came out in protest immediately after the incident. They alleged that police fired indiscriminately at the youths and there was no return fire. They raised slogans against the government and police. There were also protests in Shalla's native place, downtown Srinagar. Few incidents of stone pelting were also reported from Rambagh and Natipora.


"I saw them lying in a pool of blood. One tried to flee but could not as he was injured. The police brought him back to the main road, where he succumbed," a woman, who claimed to have witnessed the incident, told reporters at the spot.