Terror grips Gurdaspur for 11 hours; all 3 terrorists killed

Three militants suspected to be from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) killed seven people and injured several others (uncounted at the time of going to press) before being gunned down by Punjab police commandos in Dinanagar town in Gurdaspur district on Monday.

It took over 11 hours for state police commandos, supported by the army, National Security Guards (NSG) and Special Security Group (SSG) commandos to kill the three militants, who, according to official sources, had infiltrated from Pakistan's Bamiyal sector, an international border just 20 km away from the city's bus stand.

Among those killed were Gurdaspur SP (investigation) Baljit Singh, three home guards and four civilians. Eyewitnesses said two of the civilians were patients undergoing treatment at a hospital adjacent to a police station the terrorists took control of.

"The patients, by mistake, opened the windows of their room to see what was happening and were shot dead," said a police officer.

The militants dressed in army fatigues first attacked the driver of a Maruti 800 around 5:30 am on the Taragarh-Dinanagar road behind the bus stand and hijacked the car. While driving away, they fired indiscriminately on a Jammu-bound bus, carrying 70 passengers.

However, alert bus driver Nanak Chand drove the bus faster to a safer place and saved many lives. They then entered the two-storey police building, which was in a dilapidated state, and injured SHO Mukhtiar Singh before taking the building into their custody. They also hurled half a dozen grenades at security forces. Nobody was injured.

After a high alert was sounded, city deputy commissioner Abhinav Trikha called the army and NSG and SSG commandos. Policemen from the nearby districts of Pathankot and Batala were also pressed into service within two hours.

Punjab police head constable Sham Sunder, who was trapped in his residential quarter just 20 metres away, said the militants possessed sophisticated weapons, including telescopic guns. "They were trained sharp shooters as they hardly missed their targets."

Around noon, confusion prevailed in the chain of command to be followed by the securitymen as the the army wanted to take control of the operation, but the Punjab police was not ready to budge. But rumours that there were 10 terrorists and not four, one of them being a woman and the militants had ammunition around them to turn into human bombs made the Punjab police change their strategy.

The Punjab police's SWAT team, supervised by DGP Sumedh Singh Saini, did the final assault and flashed the message "Mission accomplished" around 4.45 pm.

According to the Punjab police, the attack was a result of intelligence failure. A senior officer admitted: "We could have averted the incident had we acted on the intelligence inputs that were received in the recent days about the attack." He said the militants had planned to take some Amarnath pilgrims as hostage from Dinanagar, but due to some reasons, not clear as of now, they changed their plans and targeted the police station.

Intelligence inputs on July 24 had warned that a team of 10 LeT terrorists, headed by commander Maqbool Khan, are trying to infiltrate from Dudhiniyal, Jammu, to carry out attacks in India with the help of Pakistan Rangers and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

In Delhi, the warmth of the Ufa meet between India and Pakistan turned cold over the terror attack. The Centre decided early in the day to send NSG and Special Forces to neutralise terrorists but they were kept on standby.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh chaired a high-level meeting with defence minister Manohar Parikkar, NSA Ajit Doval, BSF DG D K Pathak and chief of intelligence agencies in the evening to review the situation and decide what should be India's response.

In the meeting, Doval is understood to have strongly favoured a tough stand towards Pakistan. Sources said that BSF has been asked to retaliate with a higher degree of force in each case of infiltration attempt and increase its vigil at the border to an all-time high.

After the meeting, Rajnath Singh was to have met PM Narendra Modi to decide on the Indian response,but the meeting got postponed because of the sudden demise of former President APJ Abdul Kalam.

Debunking the bModi government's Pak policy as fool-hardy approach and nothing better than the previous Manmohan Singh government, security analyst Ajai Sahni said: "Ufa talks were a false step, undertaken without realising the ground situation and understanding Pakistan. This government that came on the promise that it will not tolerate Pakistani aggression has bent over backwards to have talks with Pakistan, thus giving legitimacy to a state that is recognised as rogue the world over."