New Delhi: The Punjab Police suspect an organised terror group to be behind the killing of two of its personnel deployed at a check post in a border village in Gurdaspur district during the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday, ThePrint has learnt.
However, investigators are yet to even identify the killers even more than 24 hours after the incident. The two policemen were found dead in the police post after being shot dead at close range.
The police post, located less than 1 km from the border with Pakistan in Adhian village, was a joint check post manned by both Border Security Force and Punjab Police.
An obscure outfit named Tehreek-e-Taliban Hindustan took responsibility for the murder of personnel identified as Assistant Sub Inspector Gurnam Singh and a Punjab Home Guard jawan, Ashok Kumar, who were shot dead. However, senior officials have rejected the claims, saying no such outfit exists.
Another video that has surfaced on social media purportedly shows a clip of the shooting, along with a still photograph of Pakistani gangster Shehzad Bhatti. In the audio, Bhatti is heard saying that the same fate will be meted out to more policemen if the Punjab Police do not stop implicating people in false cases.
Wanted in Pakistan for his criminal antecedents, Bhatti has been out of Pakistan for years now, but has been working in association with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence to target police installations and targeted killings in India.
His name cropped up last year when he took responsibility for the attack on the house of a UK-based YouTuber over a dispute. He was believed to be working with jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi earlier, before the two fell out, issuing death threats to each other. Bhatti was last heard of in Portugal, where he was allegedly attacked by Bishnoi gang members.
Sources in the Punjab Police said that an FIR, that includes section 103 (murder) under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, 2023, has been filed at the Dorangala police station.
“Several leads have emerged which are being worked upon. It seems unlikely that the assailants had come from across the border to carry out the act, but too premature to rule any angle out of the scope of investigation,” a Punjab Police officer told ThePrint, requesting anonymity.
Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann Monday announced an ex-gratia amount of Rs 1 crore each to the families of Singh and Kumar, and said an additional Rs 1 crore will be given to the families under insurance.
DGP Gaurav Yadav said that the personnel who laid down their lives in the line of duty will be accorded full police honours.
“@PunjabPoliceInd stands firmly with the bereaved families in this hour of grief. Hon’ble Chief Minister has announced an ex-gratia amount of ₹1 crore each for their families, while an additional ₹1 crore insurance payout will be provided by HDFC Bank to both families. The martyrs will be accorded full police honours,” Yadav said in a statement Monday.
Gurdaspur opposition approaches Shah
The incident put a fresh spotlight on the state of law and order in the state, with opposition leaders attacking the Chief Minister Mann as well as pointing a finger at his absence from the state.
Congress MP from Gurdaspur, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, wrote to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah to convene a high-level security review meeting with top officials of the Home Ministry along with Punjab’s DGP and chief secretary, to probe the incident.
“I write to you in my capacity as Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) from Gurdaspur, Punjab, with profound anguish over the brutal killing of two Punjab Police personnel at a border check-post in my constituency near the India-Pakistan border. The incident has gravely shaken public confidence in the capacity of our security apparatus to safeguard frontline personnel deployed on sensitive duties,” Randhawa wrote in his letter to Shah.
He also cited “credible inputs” to claim that the BSF troops did not report to the check post, which was intended to function as a joint post of the BSF and the Punjab Police. The former deputy chief minister of the state also claimed that no personnel from the BSF or the Punjab Police reported to the post even by the next morning, and they were alerted about the twin murders only after locals raised the alarm about the incident.
“If these facts are borne out by investigation, they suggest not merely a distressing lapse in duty of care towards our personnel, but a deeper systemic failure of supervision, coordination and real-time monitoring between the BSF and the Punjab Police in a sector universally acknowledged to be highly sensitive,” he further wrote.
He further attempted to claim a threefold failure behind the incident, such as an intelligence failure, with the possibility of an attack on a thinly manned border check-post in a known vulnerable sector, which seems not to have been adequately anticipated or acted upon. Additionally, he also blamed the BSF and the police in the absence of “joint deployment and timely supervision” at a post forming part of the wider border defence grid.
He further pointed to a “leadership and coordination deficit”, adding that the state has been functioning with an officiating Director General of Police at a time when there is “discernible uptick in gangsterism, narco-terror linkages and targeted attacks on police infrastructure in and around Gurdaspur”.
Randhawa urged Shah to convene a special high-level meeting to be attended by the Union Home Secretary, the chiefs of the BSF and the Intelligence Bureau, and senior officers of the National Investigation Agency, along with the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police (including the officiating DGP) of Punjab.
He also urged Shah to direct an immediate and time-bound inquiry into the responsibility for the security of the check post, as well as the apparent failure of both paramilitary and state police relieving parties to report on time, along with the possible involvement of cross-border handlers, local over-ground networks and gangster-terror syndicates active in the border belt.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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