Indian police overcame a group of gunmen dressed in military fatigues on Monday after a 12-hour battle that ended in a small-town police station near the border with Pakistan, and at least nine people were killed.
Advertisement
Evidence gleaned from Global Positioning System units the men carried points to them crossing the Ravi River into India’s Punjab a week earlier, Indian police claim, effectively opening a new front for commando-style suicide attacks ordinarily limited to disputed Kashmir.
The residence minister in India, Singh, mentioned he had requested enhanced safety about the border after the event with Pakistan.
Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju said reports the attackers were holding people hostage inside the police station appeared to be false.
Notably, Baljit Singh was a son of police inspector Achhar Singh, who too was killed by militants during the height of militancy in Punjab in 1984.
India’s National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, called it “a very serious terrorist attack”, according to the Times of India.
He, however, lauded the efforts of Punjab police and SWAT team for their bravery in killing the three terrorists.
Security has also been tightened in and around the Bhagwati Nagar Yatri Niwas in Jammu where the Amarnath Yatra pilgrims camp for the night before starting their onward journey to the Kashmir Valley, the officer said. But it is also our obligation to ask them as to what’s the distinction between what you say and what you do.
Punjab Police DGP Sumedh Singh Saini and other top officers of the force laid wreaths on the body and paid their tributes.
“The prime minister should make a statement on the issue in parliament”, he said, expressing concern over the terror attack in Dinanagar town of Gurdaspur district in Punjab on Monday. India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba for the strike, and cut off ties with Pakistan until it admitted in 2009 that the attack could’ve been planned on its soil even as it denied official involvement.
Forensic experts from Chandigarh, who arrived at the police station complex here yesterday, are looking for more clues about the identity of the three terrorists who besieged the complex for over 11 hours on Monday.
Militant infiltration had mostly been limited to a 740 km (460 mile) stretch in mountainous Kashmir known as the Line of Control, until two years ago when assaults started moving south to the less militarised area of Jammu.
Advertisement
Security agencies said the ISI was behind the cross-border drug trade in Punjab. During the encounter with terrorists, cops were found short of bullet-proof vehicles, vests and helmets among others. “They are firing indiscriminately every five minutes”, a Punjab police official, who was injured in the attack, told media as he was being taken to the hospital.
