Date : 24th December 2002
Place : Kashmir , India

Two Hindus related to a police officer have been dragged out of their home and beheaded by suspected Islamic militants in Indian Kashmir, police said.

It was the second beheading in the past week in Rajouri district, which borders the Pakistani zone of Kashmir.

Five assailants dragged the father and brother of Pawan Kumar, who was on police duty at the time, from their house in the village of Khas in Rajouri, 177 kilometres west of the winter capital Jammu, a police spokesman said.

"They barged into the home of Pawan Kumar's parents early in the morning and dragged his father and brother onto the roadside where they beheaded them," the spokesman told AFP by telephone.

Later in the day, a bomb went off at a bar in the town of Rajouri, injuring nine civilians, police said.

The victims were shifted to a hospital where one was in serious condition.

Rajouri district, which borders the Pakistani zone of Kashmir, has seen increasing violence, including a grenade attack in the main town Monday that injured two women.

Police said they tracked down two rebels overnight who were behind that blast and killed them.

On Friday, a group of suspected militants beheaded two young women and gunned down a third, in what police believe could have been retaliation for their failure to abide by strict Islamic dress codes.

The police spokesman said today's killings were believed to have been carried out by the extreme Islamist movement Lashkar-e-Taiba (The Army of the Pure).

The outfit was founded in Pakistan but banned there in January. The group's founder, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, was released from Pakistani custody last month.

Police have cordoned off the village to hunt down the five militants but have found no trace of them, the spokesman said.

More than 37,500 people have died in Kashmir since Muslim rebels launched an insurgency to end Indian rule in 1989.

Separatists and Pakistan put the death toll twice as high.

Kashmir is divided and bitterly disputed between India and Pakistan.

The Indian zone is about two-thirds Muslim, with Hindus forming the largest minority and concentrated in the south of the province.