“Come out. They won’t hurt you. Come out. I miss you,” the boy is heard saying.
Srinagar:
A video of a four-year-old boy’s appeals to his father, who had joined the terrorists, to leave a house with barricades at a meeting place, is widely circulating on social media in Jammu and Kashmir. But despite the heartbreaking appeals, the other terrorists did not allow him to leave the barricaded house. The man, Aquib Ahmad Malik, 25, who joined the terrorists in Kashmir just three months ago, was eventually killed in the operation along with three accomplices.
Amid the furious shooting at Shopian, the security forces had brought the boy and his mother to persuade Aquib Ahmad Malik to surrender.
“Come out. They won’t hurt you. Come out. I miss you,” the boy is heard saying.
The video, apparently coming from security forces, shows Aquib Ahmad Malik’s wife also making an emotional appeal to her husband during the midnight operation. “Please come out and give up. Please shoot me if you don’t want to go out. Our two sons have come with me. Come out and give up,” he is heard saying.
The army said that Aquib Ahmad Malik wanted to go out and surrender, but other terrorists stopped him by hiding in the building.
“First, his wife appealed to him to surrender. Then we facilitated their four-year-old son in the hope that her appeal would make him come out and surrender,” said Major General Rashim Bali, a senior officer.
“We have information that Aquib wanted to leave but his accomplices stopped him. If he had left, we could have saved him,” he added.
Locals say Aquib Ahmad Malik was a bank employee before disappearing on December 20 and joining the terrorists.
The army said an AK rifle and three pistols were recovered from the scene of the meeting.
Two residential homes were destroyed during the operation. In recent years, the destruction of target houses where terrorists are sheltering has been used as an effective means of killing locked up terrorists.
Last week, seven residential houses were destroyed in Shopian during an encounter, in which two terrorists were killed.
Police said 19 terrorists have been killed this year. Giving terrorists a chance to surrender remains part of the administration’s policy.
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