By Ilhak Tantray And Umer Farooq Zargar
Hassanpora (Anantnag district), Jammu and Kashmir: Less than eight hours after head constable Ashiq Hussain Qureshi was shot dead by a lone gunman at 12:30 pm near Lal Chowk in Anantnag on 22 July 2026, security forces arrived in Guree village, a 15-minute drive away.
Residents said they first took control of the family of Adil Ahmad Thoker, a local man who has been missing for nine years, and photographed his newly constructed three-storey house as well as neighbouring homes around 8 pm.
A couple of hours later, they returned.
This time, villagers said, they came with more vehicles and personnel. After 10 pm, residents watched security forces move through the neighbourhood, taking photographs and revisiting the house.
“At around midnight, several more security vehicles arrived,” said a local man who refused to be identified for fear of reprisal. “Everyone in the neighbourhood became frightened. People started asking each other, khabar kya chu? Asi chu aaz shayad raats nebar behun shurr heth (‘What’s happening? It looks like we will have to spend the night outside.’).
Shortly after 3 am on 23 July, before the fajr or dawn call to prayer, an explosion ripped through the village.
By morning, Thoker’s house had been reduced to rubble, 15 hours after Qureshi was shot dead.
2,500 Arrested
That same night—at about the same time as Thoker’s house was blown up—in the village of Hassanpora, 9 km to the southeast, security forces also demolished the house of Haroon Rashid Ganai, whom officials described as a Lashkar-e-Taiba militant. The operations were conducted jointly by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Army and the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.
