Srinagar- A middle-aged man was killed on Tuesday and three others injured when unknown militants targeted a newly opened wine shop with a hand grenade in North Kashmir’s Baramulla district.
Unknown militants on Tuesday evening hurled a grenade at the wine shop in Dewan Bagh locality of the main town Baramulla that exploded with a bang, officials said. In the blast four employees of the liquor shop were injured.
The injured identified as Ranjit Singh and Govind Singh of Rajouri and Goverdan Singh and Ravi Kumar of Kathua were removed to the hospital with splinter injuries. However, 50-year-old Ranjit Singh succumbed to his injuries later.
A local news agency quoted an unnamed police officer saying that the attacker disguised himself as a buyer before lobbing the grenade.
“Terrorists lobbed hand grenade inside a newly opened wine shop in Baramulla. 04 employees got injured. One among them succumbed to his injuries. All are from Jammu division. Area cordoned and search started to nab culprits,” police posted on its official Twitter handle.
Soon after the attack, police, army and paramilitary CRPF personnel reached the locality and started a search operation to nab the attackers. However, no arrests were made when the last reports came in.
Meanwhile, in a statement issued here on Tuesday evening, a police spokesperson said that two bike-borne militants stopped near the newly opened wine shop at Dewan Bagh Baramulla and hurled the grenade.
“The pillion rider wearing a Burka walked to the window of the said wine shop and dropped a grenade inside the said wine shop through the porthole window and thereafter fled away on the bike from the spot,” he said.
In this incident, he said, four employees of the wine shop received splinter injuries, and one among them succumbed at the hospital later.
The spokesperson said that a case has been registered in this regard under relevant sections of law and investigation is in progress.
Pertinently, a year after abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, the government in 2020 identified 183 places, including 67 spots in the Kashmir Valley for opening up liquor outlets on a large scale.
The Excise Department identified spots/places in all four districts of south Kashmir—Pulwama, Shopian, Kulgam and Anantnag followed by Srinagar, Baramulla, Bandipora, Ganderbal and Budgam.
Baramulla with 18 spots topped the survey list compiled by the Excise Department, while Srinagar remained second with eight identified places. Ganderbal and Budgam had seven identified spots each, Shopian six, Anantnag and Kulgam five each, Pulwama and Kupwara four each, while Bandipora had three proposed liquor outlet spots.
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