The terrorists who created havoc here yesterday had crossed over from Pakistan on July 26-27 night using Ravi river and they had more targets, the probe has found even as images surfaced today showing three heavily-armed men in Army fatigues walking on a road
Gurdaspur/New Delhi: The terrorists who created havoc here yesterday had crossed over from Pakistan on July 26-27 night using Ravi river and they had more targets, the probe has found even as images surfaced today showing three heavily-armed men in Army fatigues walking on a road.
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Analysis of the two GPS machines recovered from the three slain terrorists showed that the details of the routes and targets had been fed into these on July 21, sources in Punjab Police said here tonight.
"The initial data gathered from Global Positioning System (GPS) shows that the three terrorists started from a safe house in Gharot in Shakargarh, Pakistan on late Sunday night and crossed over to Bamiyal town in Pathankot, which is close to the international border," a source said.
The terrorists entered India on the intervening night of July 26 and 27 and used Ravi river to cross over, the sources said. "This route of rivulets along the border was used by them as the security apparatus here is inadequate," the source said, adding from Bamiyal, they walked down to Amritsar-Jammu highway.
Punjab Police chief Sumedh Singh Saini said the terrorists had taken the route from Dhussi Bandh (Ravi river) right along the International Border to the railway track where they planted bombs and then came to Dina Nagar. The bombs were detected on time and defused.
"As per their GPS system, they first planted bombs on railway track before snatching a car from a civilian and then gained entry into the police station of Dina Nagar," he said. Sources said the GPS analysis showed that the terrorists' targets included Dina Nagar, the railway track, SSP, Deputy Commissioner and the Army unit in Gurdaspur.
Sources in Delhi said the tracking point of one of the two GPS systems showed Talwandi point, Parmanand village and Dina Nagar as targets while the other system had Gurudaspur Civil Lines, implying that area was also the target.
He said 11 unused bombs had been recovered and five of them had been defused. Three AK-47 rifles, 17 magazines, 55 cartridges, one Rocket launcher, three hand grenades, bullet proof jackets, night vision device and heap of unused bullets were recovered from the site of the encounter, he said.
The terrorists were, however, caught on some CCTV cameras whose footages surfaced today. In one of them, a 14-second video shows three men, wearing Army fatigues, having big backpacks and carrying AK assault rifles, walking away from the camera on a road at 4:55 a.m, about half an hour before the attack on police station.
The images were captured by a CCTV camera placed at a shop at Taragarh intersection in Dinanagar area, just before they entered this Punjab town bordering Pakistan, SSP Gurdaspur G S Toor said today.
There were some more videos, one of which showed a moving car but it was not clear whether the terrorists were in it.
DGP Saini said "Inspection of the bodies show they were Muslims", implying that they were not Khalistani terrorists.
Chinese-made weapons and GPS had been recovered from them, Punjab police DGP, Sumedh Singh Saini had earlier said.
All the three militants were killed in the 12-hour-long gun battle with the police and elite commandos of the Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT).
The stretch of 15 kms from the point of crossing into India was covered by the terrorists on foot before they planted five Improvised Explosive Devices on Talwandi-Amritsar railway track, they said.
"These terrorists planted five live bombs on the railway track of Amritsar and Pathankot and each bomb had one kilogram of RDX but due to loose wiring and vibration of the track the bombs could not explode," the source said. A night vision device was also recovered from the railway tracks, they said.
The terrorists, this time, have made every attempt to hide their identity and had even removed tags on their clothes including underwears.
The terrorists were not carrying any food items except for some loose dry fruits. The terrorists were carrying three AK 47 rifles, several Chinese-made grenades, besides 10 magazines with more than 200 rounds of ammunition.
Sources in Punjab Police said the terrorists had chosen Gurdaspur as it was a "soft target".
The attackers possibly had conducted recce of the area as they placed bombs on the Amritsar-Pathankot track, some five kms from Dina Nagar and it takes time. Besides one has to know the movement of trains.
They also knew where the police station is located as they snatched the car and then straight away drove there and opened fire, the sources said.
The terrorists used the same modus operandi which they do in Jammu and Kashmir to target security installations, which which is a worrying factor, the sources said.
During the interrogation of militant Jagtar Singh Tara, lodged in a jail, it had come to light that the sikh terrorists were in touch with their Jammu and Kashmir counterparts and planning attacks in the state, he said.
"They (militants from Punjab) themselves have failed to revive terrorism in Punjab, so they are in touch with their counterparts in J and K," he said.
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