New Delhi: A Jammu and Kashmir Police head constable was allegedly abducted while four other officials were assaulted and robbed of their phones by an Army unit posted in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district.A Srinagar-based defence spokesperson said that the matter was “amicably resolved”. However, the cops have filed an FIR, invoking the stringent sections of attempted murder, abduction and robbery in connection with the incident which took place on Tuesday night, May 28.A senior police official said that a team of the territorial army posted in north Kashmir barged into Kupwara police station on Tuesday night where the army officer leading the unit confronted the station house officer, Mohammad Isaac, over the detention of one of their members.Earlier in the day, the police had raided the house of a local territorial army soldier in Batpora village of Kupwara, whose identity could not be ascertained immediately, and he was later detained for questioning in connection with an unspecified case.The Army described the case as an “operational matter.”Slapping, punchingHours after the soldier’s detention, his parent army unit arrived at the Kupwara police station where he was being questioned. A grainy CCTV footage which circulated on social media showed more than dozen army soldiers armed with automatic rifles hauling out a man in black overalls from the police station.The footage also showed one of the soldiers repeatedly slapping and punching the detained man, purportedly a police official, while other army soldiers provide him cover.According to sources, a scuffle broke out inside the police station when the army officer allegedly misbehaved with the station house officer.In the subsequent events, which have been kept under the wraps by both the cops as well as the army, four police officials identified as constables Zahoor Ahmad and Saleem Mushtaq, and special police officers Rayees Khan and Imtiyaz Ahmad Malik were assaulted.The injured were taken to Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in Srinagar and their condition is reported to be stable.‘Kupwara PS out of bounds’“Many police personnel, including the SHO, had their phones either snatched or smashed into pieces by the army soldiers due to which the Kupwara police station remains out of bounds,” an official in Kupwara Police Control Room told The Wire.He added: “Till the communication is restored, we have to manually send documents and collect documents from there.”Reports said that the army officer was angry over the soldier’s detention. According to the PTI, the soldier was questioned in an “ongoing investigation”.The Wire reached out to the Inspector General of Police (Kashmir), V.K. Birdi, and other senior officers in Kupwara district police for more details about the case in which the army soldier was detained. The story will be updated as and when their response is received.According to sources, it was only after the intervention of senior officers of the Army and J&K Police that head constable Ghulam Rasool, who was allegedly abducted from the police station, was freed on Wednesday in exchange for the territorial army soldier.The Kupwara district police have filed an FIR under sections 307 (attempt to murder), 365 (kidnapping and abduction with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person), 392 (robbery), 147 (rioting), 342 (wrongful confinement), 397 (use of deadly weapon during a robbery or dacoity), 186 (obstructing public servant), 332 (voluntarily causing harm in order to deter public servant from doing duty) and 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence in prosecution of common object) in connection with the incident.‘Minor differences’The Srinagar-based defence spokesperson, however, denied the charges.“Reports of an altercation between police and Army personnel and beating up therein of police personnel are misfounded (sic) and incorrect. Minor differences between the police personnel and a Territorial Army unit on an operational matter have been amicably resolved,” the spokesperson said.The incidents of Army-police confrontation in Jammu and Kashmir are not new. In 2017, eight police personnel were injured when they stopped four Army vehicles at a checkpoint in Ganderbal district of central Kashmir, prompting the then Director General of Police, S.P. Vaid, to lodge a protest with the Srinagar-based 15 Corps commander following which a probe was ordered by the Army whose outcome remains unknown.Interestingly, the Srinagar-based spokesperson had then also described the incident as a “minor altercation”, adding: “The matter has been resolved by personal intervention of senior officers. Measures to prevent recurrence have been taken.”In 2014, at least six policemen were injured when the soldiers of the Army’s High Altitude Warfare School scuffled with cops who were questioning them in a hit and run case in Sonamarg police station. Some soldiers had barged into Sonamarg police station and allegedly resorted to firing.Earlier in 2012, the army soldiers allegedly ransacked a police station and beat up policemen in Kathua district of Jammu in a similar incident.