Major infiltration plot by militants foiled
Freshly dug with Pak help: IG BSF
Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 29: The BSF today detected a tunnel originating from Pakistan side of the International Border and opening into a field about 170 meters inside the Indian territory in Benglard village of Samba sector and thwarted the Pakistan plot to push trained militants into Jammu and Kashmir.
The tunnel was detected amid reports in the past that number of militants were managing to infiltrate into the Indian territory from Samba-Hiranagar sector on the IB, three each of whom were killed in two separate encounters at Ban Nagrota and Jhajjar Kotli on Jammu-Udhampur road when they were heading to Kashmir in trucks. The Over Ground Workers of the militants including truck operators, who were arrested after Nagrota and Jhajjar Kotli encounters had disclosed that they had transported some militant groups from Hiranagar to South Kashmir.
The tunnel, about 50 meters from the border fence on the Indian side, was located by a BSF patrol in Benglard area of Samba sector. The BSF personnel found that 8-10 plastic sandbags stuffed in the tunnel’s mouth had “Pakistani markings”-Shakargarh and Karachi on them which clearly established involvement of Pakistani Rangers in facilitating digging of the tunnel with a view to push militants into Jammu and Kashmir.
IG BSF Jammu Frontiers NS Jamwal told reporters in Samba that going by the sandbags, the tunnel appeared to be freshly dug.
SSP Samba Shakti Pathak said an FIR has been registered in this connection at Samba police station for further investigations.
“Seeing the long tunnel, I can say that the Pakistan establishment surely has a hand in it’s digging and has knowledge of it. The date mentioned on the sandbags suggest that the tunnel has been freshly dug. We are investigating it further,” Jamwal said.
“The tunnel detected, is coming from Pakistan side and opening on our side having 25 feet depth and 2 feet to 3 feet diameter,” he added,
He however, said that they had inputs that a tunnel is being dug from Pakistan side following which special team was constituted.
“The team during searches, found the tunnel late on Friday night and Pakistan’s design of pushing terrorists into Indian Territory, have been successfully foiled,” Jamwal said.
A senior official said BSF troops got suspicious after noticing the sinking of earth at some places in a farmer’s field due to recent incessant rains.
An earth moving machine was immediately pressed into service to completely unearth the tunnel that is about 170 meters from the IB on the Indian side, sources said.
Spot inspection revealed that the tunnel was under-construction has been located near the ‘whaleback’ border post of the BSF.
The green-coloured plastic bags have markings of ‘Karachi and Shakargarh’ factories on them and the bags have a manufacturing and expiry date embossed that indicate they have been manufactured recently, sources said.
The nearest Pakistani border post ‘Gulzar’ is about 700 meters from the tunnel, they said.
The BSF pointed at the “deep connivance” of Pakistan in aiding infiltration along this front.
“With this detection, alert BSF troops foiled the nefarious design of Pakistan to infiltrate terrorists into Indian territory. The tunnel’s origin is in Pakistan territory close to IB,” sources said, adding that without active connivance of the Rangers, it wasn’t possible for anyone to dig the tunnel.
“Efforts of alert BSF troops deployed in our multi-tiered counter-infiltration grid once again resulted in neutralizing the evil designs of terrorists in deep connivance with Pak establishments,” they said.
There have been “regular inputs about the presence of terrorists in Pak border villages desperately looking for infiltration into Indian territory but vigilant BSF troops foiled desperate attempts of anti-national elements to infiltrate and carry out terrorist actions in India,” they said.
The force has been conducting a mega ‘anti-tunnel drive’ in the IB areas of Jammu and other places after five armed infiltrators were recently killed by it along this front in Punjab.
The entire BSF formation deployed across the 3,300 km International Border that runs along Jammu, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat is on extra alert as there are multiple intelligence inputs of terrorists trying to breach the IB and infiltrate into India, officials said.
The border force is also looking at deploying ground penetrating radars to detect tunnels along this sensitive front which is prone to infiltration by terrorists from Pakistan and cross-border smuggling of arms and narcotics.
Tunnels have been detected by the BSF along the Jammu border front earlier too.
The BSF, in June, had shot down a hexa-drone with a payload of five-and-a-half kilogram including a sophisticated US-Made M4 semi-automatic carbine and seven Chinese grenades along the IB in Kathua district
Following encounters at Jhajjar Kotli and Ban Nagrota on Jammu-Srinagar National Highway and disclosures by the truck operators who were arrested by security forces while transporting the militants to the Valley that they had picked up the infiltrators from Hiranagar-Samba sector, the BSF had been looking for tunnels as all the time the fencing was found intact on the International Border. While this one was freshly dug tunnel, sources don’t rule out the possibility of another tunnel on the border having been used by the militants for infiltration earlier.
The Samba sector has been used frequently by the terrorists and drug mafia to enter into the country. The NIA charge sheet, filed earlier this week, had also shown that Mohmammed Umer Farooq, nephew of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, had infiltrated in April 2018 from this sector.
Farooq has emerged as the brain behind February 14 terror strike on a CRPF convoy last year that left 40 personnel dead.
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