Missing Budgam soldier found dead

SRINAGAR — Three days after going missing, the body of an Army soldier was found in central Kashmir’s Budgam district on Thursday and IGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar said police was investigating militancy-related angle as well as a murder aspect.

“Dead body of soldier Sameer Ahmad Malla found. No mark of firearm injury found on his body,” the Inspector General of Police said in a tweet, adding, “Investigation is going on. We are looking into both aspects, (militant) crime & murder.”

Later in a statement, police said that investigation in the case is going on “vigorously and the circumstances leading to his death are being probed from all the angles.”

On Monday afternoon, the soldier Sameer Ahmad Malla went missing from his Lokipora village of Khag Budgam. The body of the soldier from Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry was recovered from Khag, a police officer told GNS.

Malla was posted in Jammu and had come home on leave as his wife had given birth to their second child recently.

Malla’s role had earlier come under investigation in 2018 for allegedly driving Army officer Major Leetul Gogoi and a local girl to a Srinagar hotel.

This incident came few months after Major Gogoi was awarded ‘Commendation Card’ for his ‘sustained efforts in ‘counter-insurgency operations’, days after he tied a villager—Farooq Ahmad Dar—to the bonnet of his jeep and paraded him through villages on election day in 2017.

For fraternising with the local woman, Gogoi was given six months loss of seniority by the Army.