Suspense over 4th militant prolonged Op

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Dinanagar, July 28

Punjab Police’s operation to gun down the three terrorists in Dinanagar on Monday was over in a mere 20 minutes, but the announcement was not made promptly as they suspected more militants may have been hiding inside the police station. 

Deputy Commissioner Dr Abhinav Trikha and SSP Gurpreet Singh Toor today said both the Army and the Punjab Police worked on the assumption the entire day that there were four or more militants in the old DSP building in the police station. “We were not in a position to confirm whether the total number of militants was three or four,” said Trikha.

“Though the terrorists were killed in just 20 minutes, the successful completion of the operation was not formally announced as the police’s SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) squad was trying to locate the fourth militant, believing he might have gone into hiding. Even Kamaljit Singh Matharoo, whose Maruti car the militants had snatched before entering the police station, told there were police four terrorists, which gave credence to the assumption,” said a senior police officer. 

The situation could have been avoided had the police checked the footage of the CCTV camera installed at the entrance of the police station. “The CCTV footage clearly indicates there were only three heavily armed terrorists who had made their way into the police station,” said the officer. Initially, the cops claimed the CCTV camera installed in the police station was not working.  But some TV channels started showing the video footage of three terrorists making their way into the police complex. 

A team of forensic science experts from a laboratory in Mohali arrived at the police station today and collected samples from the complex. A bomb disposal squad defused eight grenades found at the site. An officer said the bodies of the slain terrorists had been brought to the Gurdaspur Civil Hospital for a post-mortem. 

DGP Sumedh Singh Saini held a press conference at the Dinanagar police station today evening where he listed the ammunition found by the police from the site.