NEW DELHI: Anger spilled onto the roads on Friday after two men, who worked at an Indian army base in India-held Jammu and Kashmir, were shot dead allegedly by security guards, reports said.

The army denied the version and said armed militants had killed the migrant workers — Surinder Kumar and Kamal Kishore.

According to reports, hundreds of protesters blocked a section of a main highway that runs through India-held Kashmir over the killing of the two men who worked as labourers at an army base.

Al Jazeera quoted the area residents and officials as saying they were shot by the army guards.

They said the men were shot dead earlier on Friday by army guards at the entrance to the base in Rajouri district, 150km south of Srinagar.

The Indian military said the two men were killed by armed militants outside the military hospital in Rajouri.

A third man was injured in the incident.

Protesters burned tyres and pelted the military base with stones hours after the shooting, said a police official.

A resident of Phayalana village in Rajouri told Al Jazeera the two slain civilians who lived in the same village were “killed by the army without any reason”.

“These people were poor labourers who have small children — one of them has three kids while the other has two. Their families are devastated.”

The Indian army blamed “unidentified terrorists” for opening fire.

Garu Saneha, a politician in Rajouri with the ruling BJP, said residents were not ready to accept army’s claim.

“The army is saying these people were killed by militants but I want to ask them that if their argument is true, why didn’t they launch a search and cordon operation? They are lying. They [the army] did not come out of the camp the whole day,” he said.

Former chief minister of India-held Kashmir, Meh­booba Mufti, has demanded an impartial investigation into the incident.

Regional police have promised a fair probe.

Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2022