The Jammu and Kashmir police have unearthed another case of killing of a civilian in a “fake encounter’’ after he was picked up, shot dead and dubbed as a Pakistani militant.

This comes days after its investigation revealed the alleged role of police personnel in the disappearance and reported murder of three villagers from remote South Kashmiri villages. Reports of a fourth murder have come along with startling new evidence.

Besides “greed for cash award and out-of-way promotions,” police said, there is another dimension to the police encounters: guns and ammunition recovered from militants in “genuine operations” are not being entered in official seizure records and could be, instead, “planted” on the civilians to legitimise fake encounters.

Sources said the latest case involves Showkat Ahmad Khan of Banihal (in Doda district) who went missing from Zadibal in downtown Srinagar where he was the Imam of the local mosque. Khan disappeared during the night of October 4-5 last year and remained missing despite a frantic search by the family and local residents.

It was after the expose of the murder of three South Kashmir villagers in “fake encounters,’’ that investigators, acting on a “credible lead,” ran a fact-check on the killing of a “Pakistani militant’’ in an encounter at Ajas village.

Sources said the investigators quietly accessed the photograph of the “slain Pakistani militant’’ — identified by the Ganderbal Police as Abu Hafiz of Karachi, Pakistan. It matched that of the missing Imam, Showkat Ahmad Khan.

The Ganderbal Police claimed they conducted the Ajas encounter along with 13 Rashtriya Rifles unit, saying that an AK-56, 73 rounds of ammunition and a wireless set were recovered from the slain Pakistani militant.

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