Key Points

BSF trooper Sugam Choudhary, a general duty constable, went missing from his battalion headquarters in the Panthachowk area of Srinagar on Thursday evening.

The BSF and local police started a massive search to trace the trooper after lodging a missing report at the local police station.

"A resident of Uttar Pradesh, the general duty constable belonged to 'C' company of 60 battalion. Despite search efforts in nearby areas, including bus and taxi stands and the Railway Station Nowgam Srinagar, he could not be traced. A missing report was lodged at Police Station Panthachowk by the unit," officials said earlier.

A senior BSF officer confirmed that Choudhary has been traced in Delhi.

"He was found travelling towards his home without proper permission," the officer said, adding that a departmental inquiry would be ordered into the matter.

The officer had earlier in the day ruled out any subversive angle in the incident.

More details will come to the fore once his statement is recorded, said the officials.

It must he mentioned that after the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam in which 26 civilians were killed by Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists, security forces are on maximum alert in Jammu and Kashmir.

All three terrorists belonging to Pakistan, who carried out the Pahalgam killings, were eliminated by the joint forces on July 28 in the upper reaches of Dachigam National Park near the foot of the Mahadev mountain peak in the Harwan area of Srinagar.

The slain hardcore Pakistani terrorists included Suleman Shah and his associates Abu Hamza and Jibran Bhai. The Army had code-named the operation as 'Operation Mahadev'.

Security forces have been carrying out aggressive anti-terrorist operations against terrorists, their overground workers (OGWs) and sympathisers in order to dismantle the terror ecosystem in the union territory.

- IANS