Gurdaspur attack: Punjab Police handle operation; NSG, Army wait

NEW DELHI: The Punjab Police on Monday handled the operation in Dinanagar in Gurdaspur district on its own without turning to the elite counter-terror force, the National Security Guard, or the Indian Army.

Although the home ministry offered the services of the NSG, a contingent of which was coincidentally in Amritsar for a mock drill exercise, Punjab Police DGP Sumedh Singh Saini said his SWAT unit would do the job. The Army rushed in its special forces by 9 am but the unit was not allowed to go in, a senior MHA official said, and the nearly 10-hour-long operation was “entirely” carried out by the Punjab Police SWAT commandoes.

“The idea was to catch at least one of the three terrorists alive. Punjab did not want to use heavy firepower and mortars used by Army given the heavily built-up incident spot. NSG is meant for such operations but the state refused. Ultimately, all three terrorists were killed,” the official said.

The nearly 500-member SWAT unit of Punjab Police has been trained in counter-terror operations by a team from Israel and this was its first major operation. However, the unit could be spotted taking on the terrorists without any bullet-proof jackets or helmets and a Punjab Police SP Baljeet Singh was killed.

The ministry ruled out the ‘Khalistan’ angle and said the three terrorists suspected to be Pakistanis affiliated to Lashkar-e-Taiba were heavily armed with AK-47s, Chinese-made grenades and GPS devices, much like the 26/11 attackers.

The ministry had no specific intelligence of such an attack in Punjab or infiltration bid from Punjab side of International Border as suspected in the present incident — the recent inputs spoke of a bid only from the Jammu side of IB or LoC in J&K. Dinanagar is just 15 km from the IB.

“It was a fresh infiltration, probably on Sunday night itself,” an intelligence official said. Attacks in the Jammu sector or infiltration from the Hiranagar side in Jammu, as in the past, “have become difficult” due to higher security there and terrorists hence may have chosen Punjab given the guard being lower here. “They tried to enter the police station but upon being fired at entered an empty home guards building and got boxed in,” a ministry official said.