The shooting, the latest in a string of such incidents in the strife-torn region, took place on Monday night in Kishtwar town, south of Srinagar.
“An SSB soldier, identified as Vijay Kumar, opened fire from his service rifle on his colleagues sleeping in a camp in Kishtwar. Two soldiers have died while two others have been injured in the shooting,” IANS quoted Superintendent of Police (SP) Kulbir Singh as saying.
Two other soldiers were wounded. Stress levels are high among the hundreds of thousands of Indian police and soldiers serving in Kashmir.
The four SSB troopers were rushed to the Kishtwar district hospital, about 220 km from here, where Narinder Singh, who hails from Uttarakhand, was declared dead. His colleague Veer Singh succumbed to his injuries later.
The two other injured SSB troopers — Ravinder Nath and Habib-ul-Islam — are undergoing treatment for bullet injuries at the hospital. Habib got injured when he tried to grab Vijay Kumar who was firing indiscriminately.
The incident took place around 1 a.m. Tuesday at the police line in Kishtwar, where the SSB has been camping for the last two months after the central government decided to replace Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) with SSB for internal security in some troubled areas of the state.
Vijay Kumar has been arrested and is being interrogated.
(Free Press Kashmir)
