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Pakistan’s complicity in the audacious Gurdaspur terror strike, that left eight people, including three civilians and one superintendent of police, dead on Monday, has been established by the Narendra Modi government, with twin GPS devices recovered from three slain fidayeen nailing the hand of Islamabad.
The GPS report, that was made available to the Union home ministry and the national security adviser, revealed that the terrorists started their journey from Gharot village near Shakargarh town in Pakistan, and “either used boats or rafts, or swam” across the 500-meter water stretch of the Ujh river, which is a major tributary of the Ravi. A hunt is on by the Border Security Force for any clues that the terror module may have left behind in these waters.
After crossing the river, they headed to Bamiyal village on the Indian side of the border. From Bamiyal, the group boarded an early morning bus that took them to Highway 1A, which links Punjab with Jammu and Kashmir, and on to Dinannagar, the chosen target where the 12-hour-long gunbattle took place Monday, before the security forces gunned down the attackers.
“The fact that the terrorists fed the GPS coordinates on July 21 — five days prior to the attack — and these were the actual target spots, shows that the entire operation was planned well in advance on Pakistani soil,” a top security official said.
Talwandi point, Parmanand village and Gurudaspur Civil Lines and Army unit in Gurdaspur fell along the route that was marked in the GPS, devices implying that these areas may also have been targets. Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini said 11 unused bombs had been recovered and five of them had been defused. Three AK-47 rifles, 17 magazines, 55 cartridges, one rocket launcher, three hand grenades, bulletproof jackets, night vision devices and a heap of unused bullets were recovered from the site of the encounter.
Forensic reports have also revealed that high-grade RDX was used in the five improvised explosive devices tied on the Amritsar-Pathankot railway tracks to derail trains and cause huge casualties.
The fact that the terror module crossed over from the Punjab side of the international border and not in the Jammu sector has raised alarm in New Delhi as it clearly indicates that “Pakistan’s ISI is making a desperate bid to open the Punjab route to infiltrators, given the double-layered BSF line of defence in Jammu”. There have been persistent intelligence warnings that the BSF’s tight vigil along the IB in J&K was “worrying the terror masters in Pakistan”.
“The terror module also enjoyed some local support. The Laskhar may have activated sleeper cells in the area and the Punjab police is probing this angle,” a top official said.
What is also raising hackles in the security establishment is the uncertainity over whether there exists a “second terror group” that is still at large and may try to strike in some locations before August 15. The government has roped in the NTRO to study the GPS device further.
According to the GPS report accessed by this newspaper, one set had 12 coordinate points fed in it and the second had three. Out of the 12 coordinate points in the first GPS set, the end point was at the railway track where live IEDs were planted by the terror module. “The track was at a different direction than the police station, almost 8 km apart, and it required two and a half hours to plant the IEDs. We cannot say whether the same three terrorists visited both the terror spots,” a top official said.
The other end point of the first GPS set was the building outside the Dinanagar police station used by home guards as the camp clearly marked and fed in the device carried by the terrorists. The second GPS set had three coordinates of three villages on the Indian side en route to the Dinanagar police station.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh is, meanwhile, learnt to be upset over Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal trying to pin the blame on the Centre, turning it into a political slugfest amongst the NDA allies. While the Union Cabinet on Tuesday condoled the death of Punjab police personnel and civilians who lost their lives in the Gurdaspur attack, Mr Singh is expected to make a statement in Parliament on Thursday on the probe, naming the Pakistan-based Laskhar-e-Tayyaba as being behind the attack. Sources in the government also said India would raise the Gurdaspur terror attack prominently at the forthcoming NSA-level talks with Pakistan in New Delhi.
The Punjab police has got hold of CCTV footage showing a terrorist moving on the road early morning minutes before they started the attack. Efforts are on to gather more CCTV footage to establish the identity of the terrorist. The preliminary investigation by the state police has also revealed that the terrorists had managed to erase marks on their bodies and weapons to conceal their identity. Sources said the terrorists had shaved their body hair and also erased marks from their weapons. The men were speaking in the Punjabi dialect that is common in Pakistani Punjab, state police sources revealed.
On Tuesday, the Punjab police explained that it was a deliberate decision to finally neutralise the terrorists. The initial attempt was to capture one terrorist alive. National security adviser Ajit Doval, coordinating the operations with the Punjab Special Security Group, backed the idea till it was felt the operation had gone on too long and may create panic with the incessant media coverage. It was then decided to end the operation and neutraise the terrorists.
Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini on Tuesday thanked the Army for offering assistance. He said: “The security forces always work jointly. We are thankful to Lt. Gen. K.J. Singh, GOC-in-C, Western Command, Chandimandir, who had offered Army assistance for this operation. But we did not require the help of the Army. This operation was carried out by Punjab police officials and jawans.”
