Jammu and Kashmir police say the four accused who helped Lashkar terrorist Naveed Jhatt escape had done a recce of the area and fired during the shootout.
Jammu and Kashmir police have arrested four people directly involved in Tuesday’sraid on a hospital in Srinagar that allowed a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist to escape, sources said on Thursday.
Six other men, mostly overground workers, have also been detained for questioning, they said.
The sources added that most of the arrested men belong to south Kashmir’s Pulwama area and were apprehended by the state police’s special operation group during separate raids on Wednesday night.
“Four people, who had done a recce and were also present in the hospital during the shootout, were arrested. Two of them had even fired,’’ a senior police officer, who did not want to be named, said.
Kashmir’s home-grown militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for the attack on Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital during which gunmen shot dead two policemen and freed Naveed Jhatt, who was brought for treatment in custody.
Jhatt and another militant, who was part of the group, are still at large.
The officials said that the police were able to zero in on the four accused with the help of CCTV camera footage and conversations on social media. They have also seized a motorcycle allegedly used by the militants to flee from the area.
Jhatt, 20, received commando training at the Lashkar’s headquarters in Muridke before sneaking into India in 2012 as a teenager.
He was arrested in 2014 and managed to get a stay order on his transfer from Srinagar’s central jail to another jail outside the valley in 2016 and subsequently in 2017.
