Kishtwar SPOs: Bodies of missing J&K special police officers recovered in forest area

The bullet-riddled bodies of two Special Police Officers who went missing while on patrol in Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district were recovered in a dense forest area on Thursday morning.

The two personnel vanished on Wednesday afternoon while travelling from their Special Operations Group camp at Kiyar village in the Dachhan belt towards an Army post manned by the 17 Rashtriya Rifles at Basnan in the Dharna-Marwah region. Their service rifles were missing when search parties located their bodies, raising immediate suspicions of a militant ambush.

Security forces swung into action on Wednesday after locals reported hearing gunshots in the forest corridor between Kiyar and Derana at around 3:30 pm. Mobile network connectivity across the Marwah area experienced a disruption at approximately the same time. When the two officers failed to report at the Army post, an SOG team accompanied by the local Station House Officer launched an immediate search operation.

A massive joint sweep was launched across the difficult terrain, bringing together personnel from the Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Indian Army. Search parties discovered the bodies early on Thursday in the Dachhan forest belt, roughly two kilometres from the point where the officers were last reported travelling.

Both men had been shot multiple times. Official sources confirmed that an investigation is underway and security personnel have established a tight cordon around the surrounding forest high grounds. The upper stretches of Dachhan and Marwah, which feature dense tree cover and rugged mountain ridges, have historically been used by militant groups such as Hizbul Mujahideen to evade ground forces.

Reinforcements have been deployed to search the upper reaches and secure surrounding routes as joint security teams track down those responsible for the attack.