Two Terrorists Die in Udhampur’s Ongoing Forest Hunt

Two terrorists were killed in a rain-soaked forest in Udhampur after they tried to break an Army cordon on Thursday morning. The Indian Army’s White Knight Corps said Operation Sohan, a joint hunt with Jammu and Kashmir Police and the CRPF, was still sweeping the Brattal forests of Majalta for any remaining threat.

The raid began around 9 p.m. on Wednesday, 16 September 2026, in the remote Bratel Soan and Khubban pockets after confirmed inputs of suspected terrorist movement. A few rounds of firing and blasts were heard soon after troops moved on a suspected hideout. Then the forest went quiet until Thursday, 17 September, when the trapped men opened heavy fire.

Two Terrorists Die After a Quiet Night in Majalta

Officials said police and troops had been looking for a group after its movement was noticed in the dense forest the week before the raid. Fresh inputs on Wednesday night let the joint team throw a cordon around a particular patch of the Brattal belt. Contact came in hostile weather, on difficult ground, and in poor visibility, the Army said.

The overnight lull is a familiar forest pattern. Once the first shots and blasts faded, the men inside the cordon waited out the dark. On Thursday morning they tried to punch a hole in the ring. Security forces fired back, and the gunfight that followed left two men dead. Bodies were recovered in the early hours, along with assault rifles and ammunition, officials said. Identities were not released.

THE NIGHT IN BRATTAL

1. Week before 16 September 2026: Officials say movement of a suspected group is noticed in the Majalta forest belt.
2. 16 September, about 9 p.m.: Army, police and CRPF launch a joint search in Bratel Soan and Khubban.
3. Soon after last light: Firing and blasts are heard as forces target a suspected hideout, then the forest falls quiet.
4. 17 September, morning: The trapped men open heavy fire to break the cordon; troops retaliate and two are killed.
5. 17 September, Army update: White Knight Corps names the action Operation Sohan and says search and surveillance continue.

The Nagrota-based formation put the result on the record in a post that also warned the hunt was not finished. Road checks were already running in Majalta while the forest fight was live, and reinforcements had been sent in as the cordon tightened.

Despite hostile weather, difficult terrain and poor visibility, troops of White Knight Corps, Police and CRPF launched a targeted counter-terrorism operation, resulting in the neutralisation of two terrorists.

White Knight Corps, Indian Army, on X

#WhiteKnightCorps | #CounterTerrorismOperations

𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗦𝗢𝗛𝗔𝗡 | 𝗧𝗪𝗢 𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗥𝗢𝗥𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗦 𝗡𝗘𝗨𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗘𝗗

In a joint intelligence-based operation during the intervening night of 16/17 Sep 2026, confirmed inputs indicated the presence of terrorists in… pic.twitter.com/4UokfN8NgF

— White Knight Corps (@Whiteknight_IA) September 17, 2026

The Army added that search and surveillance were continuing and that forces remained deployed “to track and neutralise any remaining threat,” closing with its line that the knight stands vigil. That is the operational fact under the kill count: two men are dead, and the cordon has not been lifted.

Why These Hideouts Keep Turning Up in Udhampur Forests

Majalta is not a Valley orchard belt. It is high forest and broken hill, a long walk from the roads that carry the Jammu highway traffic. Officials have for years described this stretch as a place where small groups can lie up after crossing, then try to move toward Doda, Kathua or, if the path stays open, the Pir Panjal and the Valley.

Five days before the raid, on 12 September, a joint team of the Doda special operations group, Rashtriya Rifles and CRPF recovered a highly decomposed body in the Divshetar pocket of the Seojdhar forest. Officials linked the dead man to Jaish-e-Mohammad and said a US-made M4 carbine and ammunition lay nearby. The forest there connects Bhaderwah in Doda with Udhampur and Kathua. Police said the remains were of a Pakistani Jaish operative “neutralised earlier,” and that the state of the body pointed to an older death, possibly after wounds from a previous encounter.

On 10 September, Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police Nalin Prabhat visited a joint temporary operating base at the Doda-Kathua-Udhampur trijunction, with the Jammu zone inspector general and the range officers for Doda and Udhampur. He was briefed on readiness in a belt that had already seen suspicious armed movement reported in Billawar, Kathua. The Majalta gunfight landed on that same map, not on a fresh one.

This pocket has a recent file of its own. On 15 December 2025, White Knight Corps said its troops and the police special operations group had established contact with terrorists in the general area of Sohan, Udhampur, and that fire had been exchanged under a separate action. Operation Sohan on 16 and 17 September is a new hunt with an old geography. The forest did not become a hideout this week.

The Doda-Kathua-Udhampur Forest Corridor

Valley incident counts have fallen. The fights that still kill people have drifted into the Jammu hills. Official figures put terror incidents at 151 in 2022 and 35 in 2025, a drop of nearly 77 percent, with terrorists killed in operations falling from 193 to 46 and security force deaths from 30 to 17 over the same span. In 2025, trackers counted 28 civilian deaths, 17 security personnel and 46 terrorists. Twenty-six of those civilian deaths came in a single attack on tourists at Baisaran near Pahalgam on 22 April 2025.

Through early August 2026, official data recorded 12 terror incidents, two civilian deaths, two unidentified deaths, two security personnel casualties and 11 terrorists killed. A senior security official said groups have moved toward the forested Pir Panjal belt and the Chenab Valley rather than trying to sustain a long insurgency in the Valley, and that the remaining attacks are built for shock, then a melt into hard ground. Animesh Roul, writing for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, described a southward drift of militancy after 2019 that, by 2024, had consolidated into Poonch, Rajouri and Udhampur.

TERRORIST DEATHS IN FOUR JAMMU DISTRICTS

Thursday’s raid added two terrorist deaths in Udhampur to a district that, by 12 September, had already recorded two. That running add is four terrorist deaths in Udhampur in 2026, counted from those official tallies plus the Army’s confirmation. Kathua, which lost seven security personnel in 2024 alongside two terrorists, had seen one terrorist death in 2026 before this week. Kishtwar’s 2026 toll already stood at four terrorists and one security person. The corridor is not a metaphor. It is four adjoining districts with the same forest problem.

Officials Point to Jaish Without Names

White Knight Corps did not name an outfit and did not name the dead. Officials speaking after the gunfight said the two were suspected to be linked to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad. Some of those officials also said the men may be Pakistani nationals. That has not been put on the Army formation’s own account. The first question under the official post was the obvious one: who were they?

Jaish is not a new label in this belt. The group, founded in 1999 by Masood Azhar after his release in the Kandahar hijack swap, is on the Jaish-i-Mohammed on the UN sanctions list since 17 October 2001. India’s home ministry has banned Jaish-E-Mohammed under Indian law, grouping it with Tahreik-E-Furqan, the People’s Anti-Fascist Front and their front organisations. Roul’s West Point paper treats those façade names as cover for the older Pakistan-based networks, including Jaish, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.

The Seojdhar recovery five days earlier already had police stating a Pakistani Jaish link and showing a night-capable M4. That does not identify the two men killed in Majalta. It does show why officials reached for the Jaish label so fast. Local recruitment into terror ranks has fallen to single digits or near zero in recent years, officials say, which leaves foreign infiltrators and small modules as the working threat in these forests.

WHAT OFFICIALS HAVE CONFIRMED

• The result: Two terrorists were killed in the Brattal area of Udhampur during the night of 16 and 17 September.
• The units: White Knight Corps, Jammu and Kashmir Police and CRPF ran the raid as Operation Sohan.
• The conditions: The Army cited hostile weather, difficult terrain and poor visibility, and officials described incessant rain.
• The follow-up: Search and surveillance continue, and forces remain deployed against any remaining threat.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Names: The Army has not identified the two dead men.
• Group: Jaish-e-Mohammad is an officials’ suspicion, not an Army attribution.
• Nationality: Claims that the pair were Pakistani or foreign have not been issued by White Knight Corps.
• A third man: No additional body or arrest from this cordon has been announced.

Nearby actions in September sit in the same season if not the same forest. Officials said Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Yasir was killed in Budgam on 5 September, and that a Lashkar module in the Pir Panjal region was broken up on 15 September with three arrests and a powerful IED recovered. Those are Valley and Pir Panjal files. Majalta is the Jammu-side version of the same small-group problem.

21 Camps in Kathua and Udhampur Are Changing Hands

While troops were still walking the Majalta trees, the security grid under them was already being rewritten. A CRPF communication this month set the force to take over 21 camps from the Army in the Udhampur-Kathua belt, 15 of them in Kathua and six in Udhampur, with the jungle-warfare CoBRA companies in the mix. Officials described a plan for about 2,100 CRPF personnel, on the order of 21 companies, to man those sites and run counter-terror work in the forested tracks that have seen hideouts in recent years.

The handover sits on an older decision to fill gaps after Army units shifted toward the Line of Actual Control. The stated aim is to free regular infantry from routine anti-terror duty in these two districts so they can thicken the border, while CRPF and CoBRA take the CI and CT grind in the woods. Thursday’s raid was still an Army-led White Knight job with police and CRPF in the same cordon. The camp transfer is not a finished fact on the ground. It is an order meeting a live hunt.

That is the uncomfortable overlap. Kathua and Udhampur are the districts being handed to a paramilitary jungle unit because the forest threat is assessed as lasting, and they are the same districts that produced a decomposed Jaish-linked body, a DGP visit to the trijunction, and now two more dead men in Majalta, all in ten days. If the Army is stepping back from some of these camps, the groups using the trees have not stepped back with it.

Search Teams Stay in the Khubban-Brettal-Sowan Belt

By Thursday morning, after the Army’s post, search teams were still in the forested Khubban-Brettal-Sowan belt. Police kept checking vehicles on the Majalta roads. No third body had been shown. No name had been issued. The loudest gap around the raid is still the missing identities, not the body count, which the Army has already locked at two.

OPERATION SOHAN, AS STATED

• Killed: Two terrorists, identities withheld.
• Weather: Rain, poor visibility, hostile conditions on high forest ground.
• Status: Search and surveillance continuing against any remaining threat.
• Grid: Same Udhampur-Kathua-Doda forest belt now slated for a CRPF camp takeover.

A cordon that is still being swept, with roadblocks on the approaches, is a cordon the commanders do not yet trust. The two dead men may have been the whole group. They may have been the pair who stood to fight while others tried to slip the ring in the rain. Until the forest search is called off, Operation Sohan is a live hunt in Majalta, not a closed file with a Jaish stamp.

White Knight Corps has two bodies and an unfinished map. The names, the group, and anyone still in those trees are the next facts that will decide whether Thursday morning was the end of this trail or another night in the same woods.