6 killed in Punjab attack; Will give befitting reply, says India

Superintendent
of Police Baljit Singh succumbed to injuries suffered in the gunbattle
between security forces and terrorists — who were in military fatigues
and said to be heavily armed — holed up in the complex in Dinanagar, 15
km from the Pakistan border, officials said.

As security
forces have not been able to take control of the besieged complex,
officials said the death toll may be more than the victims so far
accounted for. The lone terrorist died in the police station.

“We
were hit by a burst of gunfire. I was hit on the shoulder,” said a
polce sub-inspector. “They are firing indiscriminately every five
minutes.”

The clearly well-planned dawn attack took by
surprise the small town of Dinanagar in Gurdaspur district, which
borders Pakistan and which was once a hotbed of Sikh militancy.
Gurdaspur also borders Jammu and Kashmir.

In New Delhi,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon went into a huddle with senior
ministers. Punjab officials said that contrary to initial reports, no
one had been taken hostage.

Modi met Defence Minister
Manohar Parrikar and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. No details were
available. But Parrikar earlier said that counter insurgency forces had
reached Dinanagar.

In an allusion to the terrorist
belonging to Pakistan, Home Miniser Rajnath Singh told media persons:
“If we are hit, we will give a befitting reply.” He said, “We want peace
with Pakistan, but not at the cost of national honour.”

The
Home Minister spoke to Border Security Force (BSF) chief DK Pathak and
told him to step up the vigil on the India-Pakistan border in the wake
of the Gurdaspur attack.

Minister of State at Prime
Minister’s Office, Jitendra Singh, told The Hindu that the attack was
likely orchestrated by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
agency.

The terror drama began around 5.30 am when the
terrorists hijacked a passing car on the outskirts of Dinanagar after
shooting its driver. They then drove into the town, shot the owner of a
roadside ‘dhaba’, fired at a bus headed to Jammu and then stormed the
police station complex where two Home Guards were killled.

Two civilians died when the terrorists fired at a nearby hospital, police officials said.

As
panic gripped Dinanagar, police and troops from a nearby army unit
quickly surrounded the police station complex and traded gun fire with
the terrorists inside. Superintendent Baljit Singh, who was in the
forefront, took a bullet on the head and was rushed bleeding to a
hospital where he died.

Police officials said that Punjab
Police commandos were leading the operation, with the army’s Special
Forces and the National Security Guards (NSG) providing the second ring.
Television crews were asked not to provide live footage of the
fighting.

This was the first major terror attack in Punjab
after the assassination of then chief minister Beant Singh on August 31,
1995 in Chandigarh, joint capital of Punjab and Haryana.

Nearly
nine hours later, the fighting raged at the police station. The
terrorists continued to lob grenades at the security forces, who
officials said wanted to take the militants alive.

The
police station complex, including houses meant for policemen’s families,
an adjoining government hospital and houses nearby were evacuated and
cordoned off by security forces.

Dinanagar town is located 25 km from the Jammu and Kashmir border and 235 km from Chandigarh.

Additional Director-General of Punjab Police, Dinkar Gupta, said the attack took the police in Dinanagar by surprise.

It
happened a day after Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal faced
pro-Khalistan slogans at a function at Punjab University in Patiala.

In a related development, five live bombs were found on the Amritsar-Pathankot railway track on Monday.

The
bombs were found by a passerby on a bridge near the Parmanand railway
station. Trains on the route were halted. The army defused the bombs.

A train that was to pass on the route was stopped just 200 metres from the spot where the bombs had been planted.

In New Delhi, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal condemned the terror attack.