india

Updated: Jul 12, 2019 11:15 IST

The Indian Army handed over the body of a seven-year-old boy on Thursday, days after it was found in the Kishen Ganga river close to the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir’s Gurez sector to the Pakistan army.

Officials said the boy’s body was handed over to Pakistani soldiers on Thursday afternoon after the completion of all formalities in presence of army and police personnel at Churwan, the last village on the LoC in Gurez sector.

“We had tried to hand over the body on Wednesday but it couldn’t take place,” Bandipore’s deputy commissioner Shabaz Mirza said while speaking to the Hindustan Times.

Defence spokesperson Colonel Rajesh Kalia also confirmed that the boy’s body was handed over to Pakistan.

Officials and locals said villagers had retrieved the boy’s body from the Kishen Ganga River at Achoora village on Tuesday morning.

As the police and villagers were trying to identify the boy, they found that many people had posted pictures of Abid Sheikh on social media in Gilgit Baltistan on the other side of Gurez Valley. They said the young boy was a resident of Minimarg in Astoor at Gilgit Baltistan in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

According to those posts, the boy had slipped into the Kishen Ganga in Pok while on way to his home from school and that villagers could not locate him as the river enters into Gurez Valley. The family of the boy lives in PoK around 20 kilometres from the place where the body was fished out.

In a video posted on social media, the family members of the boy had requested the Pakistani army to take up the issue with their Indian counterparts. The Pakistani army then requested the Indian side to hand over the body.

There was a delay in the process as Indian Army planned to handover the body on Wednesday at another place but Pakistan said it will accept it at Churwan, close to the village where the boy had drowned.