Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh is likely to tell Parliament on Thursday that the three alleged militants who killed seven people and were gunned down later on by the Punjab Police in Dinanagar, Gurdaspur, came from Pakistan after breaching a fence on the Ravi. This will be the first time in the past three days when the Union government will be formally issuing a statement in which it would name Pakistan.
In a departure from the past, the government all this while refrained from naming Pakistan at the very outset and waited for the operation and investigations to get over before coming to any conclusion.
The entire operation was conducted by the Punjab Police, and Mr. Singh is likely to recognise their effort.
Senior officials said that from the investigations so far and the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates, it became clear that the origin of the attack was in Pakistan.
Infiltration attemptsOfficials said that in the past one month, five attempts at cross-border infiltration came from the Pakistan side. While in four cases, the attempt was thwarted and eight militants were killed, in the fifth, the infiltrators were pushed back.
A senior official said, “The Punjab Police did a tremendous job and though the Centre offered help, they were able to conduct the operation on their own.”
Soon after the three Fidayeen militants stormed inside the Dinanagar police station, the Centre decided to rush in National Security Guard (NSG) commandos from the nearest base in Amritsar. A column of Indian Army was also rushed in. Both the NSG and the Army were kept on standby as the SWAT team of the Punjab Police conducted the operations, which lasted 11 hours.
After the incident took place on Monday, both Houses of Parliament were adjourned for two days due to the death of former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam the same day.
