Gurdaspur attackers had come using Ravi river

The terrorists who attacked Gurdaspur on Monday had come from Pakistan using the Ravi river and apparently had plans to target one more area, the probe has found even as images surfaced on Tuesday showing three heavily-armed men in army fatigues walking on a road.

Punjab police chief Sumedh Singh Saini 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.

Giving details of the probe, the deputy general of police 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 the railway track before snatching a car from a civilian and then gained entry into the police station of Dina Nagar,” he said. 

“Inspection of the bodies show they were Muslims,” he said.

In Delhi, official sources said the probe indicates that the terrorists, suspectedly belonging to Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba, had entered India through Bamiyal village and planned to target Gurudaspur civil lines also besides the police station.

The GPS, used by travellers to reach their destinations, was switched on by the terrorists after they crossed over into India, the sources said.

While the flow of the river was very fast, security agencies believe that the attackers used a canal to enter India and switched on the GPS.

The tracking point of one of the two GPS systems with the terrorists showed Talwandi point, Parmanand village and Dina Nagar. The other GPS system had Gurudaspur Civil Lines marked, implying that the area was also on their target list.

The terrorists were caught on a CCTV camera whose footage surfaced on Tuesday. The 14-second video footage shows three men, wearing army fatigues, having big backpacks and carrying AK assault rifles, walking down the road at 4:55 am on Tuesday.

The images were captured by a CCTV camera placed at a shop at Taragarh intersection in Dina nagar area, just before they entered this Punjab town bordering Pakistan, Senior Superintendent of Police Gurdaspur G S Toor said. 

Image: A policeman stands inside a damaged police station after a gunfight in Dina nagar town in Gurdaspur district of Punjab. Indian police overcame a group of heavily armed men dressed in military fatigues on Monday after a 12-hour gun battle that ended in the small-town police station near the border with Pakistan, and at least nine people were killed. Photograph: Munish Sharma/Reuters