No terror angle to P’kot carjacking

Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 20

Police investigation into the six-day-old Pathankot carjacking case has suggested that a gang of car thieves instead of a terror outfit committed the crime.

The incident had assumed importance after the Sunday’s grenade attack at a Nirankari Bhavan in Adliwal village of Amritsar.

The police have identified a known car thief as one of the four persons, who had taken away the Innova at gunpoint from its driver near Madhopur on the Pathankot-Kathua highway on November 14.

After the incident, a red alert was sounded in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. It was feared that a group of terrorists might have taken away the car like the infamous Dinanagar attack.

A senior cop said the incident was a common crime. “On the basis of the CCTV footage, one of the criminals has been identified. We will arrest him and others soon,” he added. A red alert was later sounded in New Delhi also after some intelligence inputs suggested that a group of Kashmiri militants was involved in the incident.