Is there a 17 day pattern to militants striking every time after an Indo-Pak dialogue breakthrough?

NEW DELHI: Just 17 days after the Modi-Sharif meeting in Ufa, Russia, terror struck at the nascent peace effort as Pak-origin terrorists targetted a police building in Gurdaspur on Monday.

The attack left 11 people dead, including the militants. It was exactly 17 days after Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s ‘Saarc Yatra’ to Islamabad, when terrorists carried out a similar strike on military camps in Samba and Kathua in Jammu on March 20.

What is striking is that Monday’s attack is almost a “mirror image” of the attack in Jammu. The one difference being that this group crossed the border in Punjab across Ujj river, a tributary of river Ravi.






The pattern is noteworthy. Both attacks targetted security forces and their installations, terrorists crossed over from Pakistan in both strikes from the international border in groups of four to six, they used similar methods like hijacking a civilian vehicle and opening indiscriminate firing. And most importantly, they came just after some peace gesture.

However, top sources told ET that India will not call off the conversation agreed upon at Ufa, especially the National Security Adviser-level dialogue.

The understanding at the highest levels is that these dialogues were agreed upon for the purpose of talking terror and Monday’s attack only underlines the need to have this conversation.

While all three terrorists were killed by the evening, the attack did send the security establishment into a huddle as they sought to plot the pattern and formulate a response. The government was clear that even though dialogue will be pursued, New Delhi will respond to any such attack just like it responded to cross-border firing.

Soon after the situation was brought under control, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for an urgent meeting of relevant ministers and officials. Home Minister Rajnath Singh also told reporters that India will giving a befitting response.

On the 17-day coincidence, which is now being looked at closely, one conjecture being made is that this could mean two weeks’ preparation and three days for execution. The suspicion is that this lot of terrorists crossed over at night and probably split into two groups. The second group may have placed the IEDs on the railway tracks and in which case, they are yet to be apprehended.

Army officials suspect a breach of the international boundary (IB) in Punjab through the Ujj river by heavily armed Pakistani terrorists, which opens up a new dimension in cross-border strikes. Unlike Jammu & Kashmir that is disputed by Pakistan, the border in Punjab is mutually accepted. For more than two decades, the most serious cross-border offences have involved drug smuggling.

On the striking resemblance, a senior military official said: “The same pattern is visible. In the Samba and Kathua attacks too, militants slipped across the border just before dawn, exploiting the riverine system in the area before going in for an attack of a pre-selected target.”

In the same way, militants in Punjab are believed to have crossed over at night, commandeering a civilian vehicle at first light and then proceeding to the police station in Dinanagar.

“It is suspected that the two attacks have been carried out by a similarly trained module from across the border. This time they picked a softer target as a high alert is on in the Jammu area,” a senior official told ET.