Pakistan-based terror outfits may be shifting focus to Punjab

Indian policemen carry the body of one of their colleagues killed in a rebel attack in the town of Dinanagar, in the northern state of Punjab, India, Monday, July 27, 2015. Indian forces fought an extended gunbattle Monday with militants who attacked a moving bus and stormed into a police station in a northern town bordering Pakistan. AP

Security agencies fear that Pakistan-based terror outfits are now trying to shift partial focus from Kashmir to the border state of Punjab, where they can easily intrude and strike “at ease” as compared to the Kashmir valley.

Monday morning’s daring attack on a police station in Gurdaspur was the first  step in this direction, security experts said. It is the first major terror strike in Punjab after almost two decades. The last major terror strike was reported in 1991, when Sikh terrorists killed over 80 people in two trains in Ludhiana district.

One terror attack was reported in Ludhiana in 2007, when a cinema complex was bombed, allegedly by Babbar Khalsa terrorists. The Gurdaspur attack is the first major Fidayeen strike in Punjab after Beant Singh’s killing in 1995 allegedly by a Khalistan Liberation Force suicide bomber.

Security agencies said it is too early to comment on who was involved in the Gurdaspur terror strike, but they suspect Pakistan-based terror outfits “who seem to have taken assistance from local sleeper cells.”

“It was a well-thought-out, well-planned attack. Despite the fact that only three terrorists were involved, the damage they have done is much more than what was expected,” said a senior officer of a security agency.

“Three terrorists engaged police and army personnel for over 12 hours. That is  not easy,” the officer said. While it is not yet clear which route they took to intrude into India and when they actually entered the country, there is a clear indication that such an operation cannot be done without local help, said another officer.

“We have been receiving inputs for the past five years that Pak-supported terror outfits have been trying to revive terrorism in the state, but this is the first successful strike by terrorists in Punjab,” he said.

Another security expert said Fidayeen attacks were not very common in Punjab as it is generally the Kashmir terrorists who conduct such operations in Jammu and other bordering districts in the Valley. What is worrying security agencies are inputs that Kashmiri terror outfits have managed to build “assets” in Punjab’s rural areas with the help of Pakistan-based Sikh terrorists. “If this is true, we would see similar suicide attacks in Punjab in the coming years,” the officer said.

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