SRINAGAR: To teach their principal a lesson, nearly 22 students of Army Goodwill School in North Kashmirs Handwara district were on way to Pakistan-administrated Kashmir for arms training early this month before army cut them short and sent them back.
The incident happened when the students angry over the harsh attitude of their school principal used Google maps and GPS system for crossing Line of Control during this past Ramazan.
Just 5km before LoC, these class 8,9 students aged 13-15 were intercepted by army near Watsar in Rajwar and handed over to police.
During questioning, the students told police officials that they had left the school on 18th Ramazan, changed their clothes and took a bus to reach Bonwan village. They (students) used Google maps for the travel, the police official said.
Behind their adventure cum technology trip, police learnt, was a deep sense of retribution to teach school principal a lesson over his harsh attitude.
“We have to kill our school principal, he is very harsh to us, we didn’t have arms to kill him so we tried to fly to the other side of the country to bring arms,”a detained studenttold police.
“This wasn’t expected,”a police official said. “Twenty of them left from their homes early in the morning and met at a fixed place as decided by them earlier,” he said. He said they left for Zachaldara village of Rajwar area by a local bus where the other two (name withheld) students were waiting for them. “It was a planned move to cross over LoC,” police said.
They said from Zachaldara they left for LOC by foot. While taking shortcuts from the nearby forests they reached the village Bowan which is just 6-7 kms from the LOC.
“We lost our way from the village Bowan and luckily one of the students had an android phone along with him, we used Google maps application to find our way ahead, we spotted the army patrolling party several times on our way but we managed to escape from their sites,” said a student, who was part of the group. “But when we reached Bowan Watsar village of that area we were trapped in an ambush which was put by the local 21RR army battalion of Rajwar,” he said, adding “We tried hard to escape from the spot but one of the army personnel fired in our direction.”
Another student while narrating the story said one of the army personnel kept on shouting ‘surrender, surrender.”
“We put our hands in the upwards direction and we were detained and later taken to the police post,” he said. The students were later shifted to Police Station, Handwara, where they were questioned first and later released.
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