One killed, another injured as VDG member ‘opens fire’ in J&K’s Udhampur

A firing incident involving armed civilian members of the Village Defence Guards (VDG) left one dead and another injured in Jammu division’s Udhampur district on Friday (August 14, 2026).

Preliminary reports suggest that a scuffle broke out among the VDG members, trained to fight against terrorists, in Udhampur’s hilly pocket of Pancheri area. Initial information suggests that one VDG member, Surjeet Singh, a resident of Sasri Damnot, fired upon two civilians.

One civilian, identified as Baldev Singh was left dead in the firing incident and another civilian, identified as Romesh Singh, was critically injured. The injured was shifted to a hospital in the district.

Officials said the firing incident was being investigated. A police team assessed the spot where the incident took place and “will prepare a report soon”, officials said. Initial investigation suggests that the firing could be the result of an “altercation”. However, the officials said the police were “still in the process of establishing the cause of the firing”. Meanwhile, the accused was on the run, officials said.

Second incident in two years

This is the second such incident in the past two years in the Jammu region. A woman was left dead in Kishtwar’s Chatroo area after a VDG opened fire in 2025. Two VDG members were kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Kishtwar in 2024.

Earlier known as Village Defence Committees, the civilian armed groups were first constituted in Jammu and Kashmir in 1995 in 10 districts of the Jammu region. The move was made after multiple terrorists carried out the killings of members of minority communities till 2006. Later, it was disbanded. However, after the Dangri attack in Rajouri in 2023, which left six civilians dead and injured 15 others, the Centre decided to revive these groups and renamed them as VDGs. Hundreds of locals in the Jammu region have been imparted armed training in automatic rifles by the security forces in the past three years.

Before 2006, around 26,567 locals were recruited into VDCs in the Jammu region. According to official figures, 160 criminal cases involving VDC members were filed in the Jammu region.