Gurdaspur district borders Pakistan on one side and Jammu and Kashmir on the other.
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Saini did not elaborate why police concluded the gunmen were Muslim and declined to confirm whether or not they were from Pakistan, as some Indian security sources had suggested.
Jitendra Singh, a junior minister in Prime Minister Nerandra Modi’s office said today that he did not rule out Pakistan’s involvement in the attacks. “Despite the fact that only three terrorists were involved, the damage they have done is much more than what was expected”, said a senior officer of a security agency.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh said he had spoken to D.K. Pathak, Director-General of the Border Security Force (BSF), and instructed him to step up the vigil on India-Pakistan border in the wake of the attack in Gurdaspur.
“This militancy is a national problem, not a state problem, so it needs to be tackled with a national policy”, he told reporters.
“We have been receiving inputs for the past five years that Pak-supported terror outfits have been trying to revive terrorism in the state, but this is the first successful strike by terrorists in Punjab“, he said.
Bains said a group of about five attackers came in a white Susuki-Maruti hatchback vehicle, dressed in army uniforms. They drove up to the police station in it and opened fire, killing the policeman on guard duty, before storming inside and killing another policeman.
“They are not Kashmiris… I was hit on the shoulder”, said a police sub-inspector in the morning as he was taken to a hospital. All three were killed by security forces.
The siege continued through the day. The attackers also hurled hand-grenades in the police station.
On Monday, India’s opposition Congress party accused Modi of appeasing Pakistan and there were rowdy scenes in India’s parliament, where members of the lower house demanded a resolution condemning the attack.
Insurgents frequently target police in the volatile Kashmir region, which is divided between arch rivals India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both.
Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Salahuddin, who is based in Pakistan, denied his men were involved in the attack.
The CCTV footage shows the three terrorists moving freely on foot on a road in Dinanagar town at 4.55 a.m. on Monday, minutes before they began firing indiscriminately at the town’s bus stand and near the police station complex.
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Asked if there was a Pakistani hand in the mayhem, he said: “It is too early to say from where they have come”.
