SPO killed in Jammu had raised concerns over deployment, locals tell police

Special Police Officer (SPO) Bobby Chand was among two officers gunned down in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar district recently. His family and local villagers say he had raised concerns about being deployed weekly at a Temporary Operational Base (TOB) of the Rashtriya Rifles in Dharna village, which lay outside his normal posting area.

On Thursday, the bodies of Chand and his nephew Rachpal Kumar were discovered in Marwah tehsil, just under 24 hours after they went missing. The post where they worked, under the Dachhan tehsil, had four personnel. A weekly roster had been prepared by a senior police officer in Kishtwar, requiring two officers at a time to accompany RR staff to the Dharna TOB in Marwah tehsil.

Kiyar, where the SPOs worked, lacked mobile phone coverage and was considered a “shadow zone.” Villagers told the officers that when the SPOs returned from a week-long duty at the Dharna TOB, they encountered locals in the forests who inquired about their identities and replacements. The SPOs, believing the people were locals, did not suspect any threat.

They proceeded to a mountain ridge where RR had established a TOB, walking some distance ahead of several civilians carrying rations on ponies for the RR personnel. Under fire, the ponywallas escaped and reported the incident to the police post in Dharna village. The SPOs, armed, disappeared. Chand had narrowly escaped a militant attack in 2000 when militants in Army uniforms killed eight members of the village defence committee in Kiyar.

Local BJP leader Shagun Parihar criticized the roster, demanding an inquiry and action against the officer who prepared it, accusing DIG Shukla of coming only after instructions from the Lt Governor.