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MUZAFFARABAD, Dec 29: Four children were buried alive when a portion of their house collapsed in a remote AJK village early Wednesday morning, police said.
The incident occurred at about 6am in Katha Peeran, some 85 kilometres from here in the north-eastern Neelum Valley, senior police officer Raja Ghulam Sarwar said.
"The children were fast asleep in one room when a big rock from the adjacent mountain pierced through the mud-roof of their house, killing all children on the spot," he said.
Children of Ghulam Hussain, the victims have been identified as Jamila, 16, Farida, 12, Kulsoom 8-year-old and their 5-year old brother Ajmal. The northern part of Azad Kashmir is in the grip of extreme cold for the past couple of days which has brought the mercury considerably down.
An official at the local meteorological department told this correspondent that the upper areas of Neelum valley had particularly received heavy rains and snowfall which had also disrupted communication links at various spots.
GANG BUSTED: Police have arrested two members of a group involved in fake allotment and transfer of official land in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Muzaffarabad Deputy Commissioner Mahmoodul Hassan Raja and SSP Tahir Mehmood Qureshi told a news conference on Wednesday that investigations into a recent theft of record from the office of custodian evacuee property had led to the discovery of the group, comprising two revenue department officials, Girdawar Dilpazir Abbasi and Patwari Mir Gulfraz, an assistant sub-inspector of the Reserve Police and two others.
The police arrested Mr Abbasi on Tuesday night and Mr Fahim Gull, a forest department official, early on Wednesday morning, but the others fled, the officials said.
The group would prepare fake allotment papers or tamper with the old ones for monetary benefit, the commissioner said. A special investigation team had raided Mr Abbasi's private office and seized hundreds of tampered or blank allotment papers and fake army NOCs (no objection certificates) from there, he explained.
The revenue department official, he said, had also been preparing state subject and domicile certificates using deputy commissioner's counterfeit signatures. According to the DC, Mr Abbasi had admitted the theft in the custodian office during Eid holidays with the help of his group.
