Punjab border: Most police posts easy target for terrorists due to lack of boundary walls & ammunition

PUNJAB BORDER: The terrorists who stormed Dinanagar police station on Monday would not have needed to even scale a boundary wall if they had wished to attack the Bamiyal police chowki. This police post, located just a kilometre from the International Border and nearest to the suspected infiltration point, functions out of arented two-room shop and has no boundary wall at all, making it a sitting duck for such attacks.

The post is located in an open field where a dozen Punjab police cops are posted with a couple of .303 rifles, without even a sentry post. Driving further down to Dinangar on the route that the terrorists may have taken as per their GPS coordinates, falls the Taragarh police station.

It is difficult to spot the police station, though, even as there is a board indicating towards it. A closer look reveals it is actually a health centre. The authorities have allocated a few abandoned residential quarters of the health centre’s staff on the rear of the building for the police station.

A walk around the health centre brings you to the police station, where a sub-inspector says they do have some sten guns in their arsenal.

At noon on Friday, though, there were just four police officials present, with a .303 rifle-wielding constable manning the post.

A similar scene unfolded at Narot Jamail Singh station, the one next to Taragarh. In fact, most border police stations and posts in Gurdaspur and Pathankot districts are in similar sorry state of affairs, with most of them housed in dilapidated rented buildings.

A senior home ministry official told ET that Punjab needs to drastically improve the security of its border police posts and stations as they are located in sensitive areas next to the border.

“It is hard to believe that the police infrastructure in these areas, in a state which was once affected by militancy, has deteriorated to such an extent…they could be the first responder if a terror attack happens after infiltration,” said the official, requesting not to be identified.

Gurdaspur SSP GS Toor declined to comment but a senior Punjab Police official said on the condition of anonymity that the police posts and stations near the border “are meant for attending to crime and law and order issues in the villages” and not exactly terrorism. “There has been no terror incident here for over two decades. It is the BSF’s duty at the border to stop terrorists from entering India,” the senior official said.

A recent Comptroller and Auditor General report had slammed Punjab Police for carrying obsolete weaponry and said modern weapons bought by the force were lying unused for lack of procurement of compatible ammunition.