The Sub Divisional Police officer, Anantnag, Shiv Kumar Singh Chouhan, was by chance present at the check point when a Maruti was stopped and the driver asked to come down for routine frisking and checking of the car. ``It was around three months ago. I was standing with my party there. I saw a non-Kashmiri youngster driving the car and asked him who he was and what was he doing here,'' Chouhan said. ``He turned pale and started stammering. The papers of the car only added to my suspicion and I asked my men to seize the car and arrest him for questioning,'' he said.

Interestingly, Chouhan was expecting to extract information about a gang of carjackers operating here under the cover of militancy here. ``We had information about a gang of carjackers and had no inklingthat it may solve a blind murder case,'' he said. It is a well known that a few gangs of carjackers with links outside the State are active here.

Explaining the modus operandi of these gangs a senior police officer said, ``The cars they steal outside J&K State are being sold here after managing fake papers while those stolen here are sold outside. They were also literally getting away with it as the local police busy with the militancy would give no attention to such crimes.''

The youngster arrested by the police was later identified as Faheem from Nanital. He was in Anantnag working as a dentor at a workshop owned by a businessman from Uttar Pradesh. It is learnt that the person with whom Faheem was working approached the court to get him and the car released from the police. And he was finally bailed out, however, without the car, as SSP Anantnag, Farooq Khan had sent the chassis number as well as the engine number to all the police departments in the neighbouring states for verification. One of hisguarantors, a local youngster, who had identified himself as Saleem of village Mir Tantar had also given a fake name and address.

DIG, Ananatnag range, Raja Ajaz said he did not release the case after the Delhi police intimated that the car was involved in a murder case. ``A few days back, a Delhi police team visited and took the car along. I asked my officers to co-operate with them but we had no further information,'' he said.

Chouhan, however, claimed that the Delhi Police Inspector Mahesh Kumar, who had come in connection with the case, told them the person who was driving this car was missing along with the car. ``He, in fact gave some other name,'' Chouhan said.