Late Friday night members of the local police’s counter-insurgency Special Operations Group were joined by the Army’s 22 Rashtriya Rifles personnel to move into a village in J&K’s Baramulla district to take on militant commander Yasir Tunda following specific information that he was hiding in the house of one Ali Muhammad Butt.
The house was sealed and shortly before daybreak Saturday, a search party led by SI Dilraj Singh entered the house. The house was searched thoroughly but other than a dozen women and children, no one was found. The male family members had already been asked to leave the premises.
In a second search, the militant commander emer-ged from a cupboard and instantly targeted the sea-rch party with his assault rifle, injuring Singh. The militant commander was killed in the return fire, said officials. They added that the slain militant was a Pakistani national who had operated in the Valley since 2002 under the code names of Showkat, Shahzeb and Shoab.
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Asif Ibrahim tipped to be new IB chief
New Delhi, Nov. 24: Senior IPS officer S. Asif Ibrahim is tipped to be the new Intell-igence Bureau chief, the first Muslim to head the organisation, official sources said on Saturday night.
Mr Asif, a 1977 batch IPS, made it to the top slot because of his wide range of experience in covering various departments of the organisation which mainly deal with intelligence pertaining to internal security, they said. He succeeds Nehchal Sandhu who retires on December 31. There were three officers senior to Asif in the IB who have been given different assignments — R.N. Gupta, Rajgopal, Yashovardhan Azad — all 1976 batch IPS officers while Mr Jairaman is from the 1977 batch.
They have been acco-mmodated as OSD to Cabinet Secretary, chief of Joint Intelligence Co-mmittee, secretary (sec-urity), and director of National Police Acad-emy respectively. Form-al orders of Mr Ibra-him's appointment are expected to be issued on Monday. — PTI