THE Indian army has denied claims that it framed three young Kashmiri men who it shot dead last week.

Security forces insisted that the trio had died during a gunfight last Tuesday and claimed that they were supporters of an armed Kashmiri group which had been planning an attack.

But the families of the three victims — Zubair Ahmad Lone, 25, Ather Mushtaq Wani, 16, and Aijaz Maqbool Ganai, 22 — said the men were innocent and were murdered in “another case of a staged gunfight.”