Pathankot/Gurdaspur: After a massive combing operation spanning over three days, security forces on Friday declared that the sprawling Air Force station in Pathankot in Punjab was fully sanitised, seven days after six terrorists struck.
In adjoining Gurdaspur also, security forces called off their three-day-long extensive search operation as they found no suspected terrorist as claimed by locals who had reported sighting of two men in armed fatigues moving in suspicious manner.
“The combing operation at the Air Force station is over,” a senior IAF official said, adding the entire area has been sanitised. The sanitisation operation had been going on for the last three days ever since the six terrorists were gunned down. The operation to ensure that no terrorist was hiding was carried out jointly by Army, NSG and IAF’s Garud commandos. The official said the IAF was “sharing and supporting” the NIA with the inputs.
The NIA has investigated the personnel of Defence Services Corps (DSC) in connection with the terror attack. In Gurdaspur, Superintendent of Police (Investigation) Batala, Pardeep Malik said, “The search operation is over. Nothing has been found suspicious.” Malik, who supervised the search operation on the third day, said search operations were conducted in 15 km radius of the Tibri cantonment area.
Extensive search operations were carried out jointly by Punjab police, army and BSF after some locals claimed to have seen two men in army fatigues moving suspiciously on Wednesday in Pandher village near the Tibri cantonment.
Malik said the sugarcane field, where security officials today concentrated their search operations, was also thoroughly checked and nothing suspicious was found. After the operation was over, the traffic on Gurdaspur-Mukerian road which remained closed for three days was opened for vehicular movement.
During this operation, drone, chopper, dog squad and bullet proof vehicles were pressed into service to trace the location of suspects. In this joint operation with the army, Punjab police have even deployed its Israel-trained SWAT team which have been specially trained to neutralize terrorists.
Punjab’s SWAT team had played a major role in neutralizing terrorists who had carried out attack at Dinanagar in the month of July last year. Significantly, a day before the Pathankot attack, there were reports of sighting of 4-5 terrorists after a Superintendent of Police was allegedly abducted. The same terrorists then carried out the attack on the Air base.
Gurdaspur was targeted by Pakistani terrorists in July last year when a police station here was attacked while Pathankot was witness to a terror strike on Air base on last Saturday. (PTI)
