The Border Security Force (BSF) in Gurdaspur is moving the barbed wire fencing with Pakistan closer to the International Border for better security management and “operational efficiency” in the area, BSF officials have said. In another key measure, BSF personnel, who are mandated with guarding the border, are now fanning out into the interiors of the Gurdaspur and Pathankot districts with “depth nakas” at several strategic junctions, and “depth patrolling” at random places, along with the Punjab police.
On July 27 last year, three men shot their way through the streets of Dinanagar, about 12 km from the border, and still shooting, stormed into the town’s police station. They holed up in a building inside the premises and were killed after a 10-hour firefight with Punjab police commandos. One year after the Dinanagar attack, the BSF and the Punjab Police remain locked in a tussle on how the men entered Punjab. The Punjab Police says they crossed the IB from Pakistan’s Punjab province. The BSF is equally emphatic they did not cross the IB in Punjab.
But in the months after the attack, during which there was another terrorist attack, this time on the Pathankot Air Base, with more definite evidence that the terrorists had crossed over the IB, the BSF hopes that rationalising the wire fencing with the IB, the depth patrolling and ‘smart’ movement-detecting equipment will help it plug any security holes on this border. The BSF has shifted the fence closer to the International Border at least in two villages in Gurdaspur district, and a senior official said the “process is on” at other places.
