Did terrorists use the same intrusion point for Pathankot and Gurdaspur attacks?

PATHANKOT: The terrorists who attacked the Pathankot Indian Air Force base may have infiltrated into India at the same point as the perpetrators of the July 27 Gurdaspur terror attack. Police officers have again pointed to the BSF border outpost at Bamiyal in Pathankot as their possible point of entry .

Bamiyal is barely 40km from Dinanagar with a population of around 700, mostly defence personnel. The National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) analysed the data in the GPS devices recovered from the three dead terrorists immediately after the Gurdaspur attack, and found 12 different pre-fed locations in the devices which confirmed Punjab Police's stand.

However, BSF has consistently maintained that the Lashkar-e-Taiba militants who attacked Gurdaspur's Dinanagar police station had not breached Punjab's international border. Top officials told TOI they didn't find anything untoward during their search operation on Friday .

Experts said the BSF should find out if there are tunnels between India and Pakistan along the border which may be big enough for men to use. That drug smugglers from Pakistan use smaller tunnels to slip contraband into India is already a well-established fact among security agencies. "The best targets for terro rists to strike at are those which can be reached after one night's travel, may be on foo or by a small vehicle, and both Dinanagar and Pathankot fit into this category ," Punjab Frontier BSF ex-inspector general M S Malhi told TOI. He said the area along the Pakistan border in Punjab has rivers, tributaries, contributories and broken ground where rivers criss-cross at several places. This makes surveillance difficult. "Either the terrorists know some major weakness on the border or they have dug a tunnel," he says.

His strong suspicion is that there is a tunnel. "This is the reason they are striking a their will in this region despite there being so much security at the border," he added. In the past, BSF had detected a couple of tunnels connecting India and Pakistan. Malhi added that terrorist organisations start digging tunnels in September after monsoon and use them for infiltration between December and February . "Inspectors general of frontiers of both Punjab and Jammu should constitute a joint team to patrol these hostile terrains."

Another retired BSF IG Himmat Singh said the many small and rivulets entering Punjab from Jammu make sneaking by terrorists easier. Besides, immediately af ter crossing the border, terrorists have access to roads to reach their target.