Overview
- Two Special Police Officers, identified as Babi Chand and Rashpal Kumar, went missing on Wednesday while travelling from their Kiyar camp to an Army post and their phones were initially reachable before going dead.
- Search teams recovered the officers' bodies early Thursday in the Dachhan/Dherna forest area with multiple bullet wounds and their service weapons were not found.
- Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Army's Rashtriya Rifles and the CRPF launched a large joint search that has been widened with reinforcements, drones, sniffer dogs, cordon-and-search operations and roadblock checks.
- Investigators are treating a militant motive as the main line of inquiry, are probing possible overground support and foreign militant links, and note that a separate attack in Kulgam on the same day that injured three CRPF personnel has prompted area-wide security measures.
- Kishtwar's remote, forested terrain and recent killings of local security personnel have long complicated counter-insurgency work, raising questions about patrol safety, weapons recovery and the need for combined human and technical intelligence to prevent further attacks.