New Delhi: He left home a month ago to join insurgents, escaping from alleged police harassment. But the death of 24-year-old Younis Ganai has come as a kind of "relief" to his father.

"He died to help his family live in peace," says Maqbool Ganai after hearing that the Kashmiri militant was killed in a weekend gun battle. Younis and his companion, both Hizbul Mujahideen militants, were gunned down in a shootout in a central Kashmir village, a few kilometres away from his home in Budgam.