HAILING HEROES Visits families of Honorary Captain Fateh Singh, Havildar Kulwant Singh, promises all support
GURDASPUR: Defence minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday visited the families of Honorary Captain Fateh Singh and Havildar Kulwant Singh, who laid down their lives fighting terrorists at the Pathankot air force base.
HT PHOTODefence minister Manohar Parrikar at martyr Kulwant Singh’s house at Chak Sharif village in Gurdaspur on Tuesday.
At Jhanda Gujjran village, Parrikar announced a job for Fateh Singh’s daughter Madhu Radha and free education for his younger son Nitin, a Class-8 student. Fateh’s elder son Gurdip Rana, who is serving in the 15 Dogra Regiment in Sikkim, will be transferred to Tibri Military Station near Gurdaspur, said Parrikar.
The minister also announced that Pathankot martyrs would be treated as battle casualties and corresponding benefits would be provided to the families.
Even the injured would get all due benefits, he said.
At Havildar Kulwant Singh’s house in Chak Sharif village, the defence minister said the families of the martyrs belonged to the nation.
He said he will instruct the officials of the army brigade nearby to take care of these families and ensure that they don’t face any hardship.
10 LESSONS FROM THE ASSAULT
Counter-terror ops to protect India’s largest operational air base near Pakistan spilled over three days and raised several questions. Security experts give key lessons to be learnt from the incident.
1 MORE MEN ON THE BORDER
HT FILE/SAMEER SEHGALThe bold attack by terrorists has raised eyebrows.In J&K, a BSF company (about 100 men) guards an average frontage of 2.75km. In Punjab it covers 5.6km, underling an urgent need of more men and equipment on international border.
2 STRENGTHEN INTELLIGENCE
Garner more real-time actionable inputs, especially from human sources. Also need better-trained officers to glean such intelligence more effectively.
3 BUST NARCO ROUTE
Thriving cross-border drug smuggling network is suspected to be providing an extensive logistics support to terror outfits based in Pakistan.
4 HIGH-VALUE SYSTEMS
As militants in the region are increasingly targeting defence bases, special plans and sophisticated force are required to ensure fool-proof security.
5 BETTER TRAINING
Terrorists are known to improvise. Every counter-terror operation is a new learning curve. Training designs need to be constantly upgraded.
6 CORRECT INFORMATION
Declaring the operation’s success even before it got over was a public embarrassment. A unified command centre for media briefing is needed.
7 A CLEAR STRUCTURE
For operations involving multiple security agencies like NSG, army and police, a clear command and control structure can check any gaps in coordination at operation level.
8 BRIDGING THE GAP
Experts pointed out huge gaps in vigilance, planning, coordination and counterterrorism force application during the operations.
9 BOLSTER AIR SURVEILLANCE
Air surveillance on Punjab and Jammu borders is currently done more on a special basis. A routine arrangement can act as a better scanner and plug the loopholes.
10 SECURITY AUDIT
A thorough security audit, in a timebound manner, at all vulnerable military installations to plug gaps in the existing security architecture.
Gaping holes make airbase vulnerable
PATHANKOT: Even as combing operations continued at the Pathankot air base for the fourth day on Tuesday which had led to the death of seven security personnel while neutralising six terrorists, various agencies involved in the operation are still grappling with the question how the terrorists, armed with loads of ammunition managed to enter the heavily guarded air force base.
RAVI KUMAR/HTThe wall near the main entry of the Pathankot airbase is adjoining to the residential area of Dhaki village.The air force station is spread across over 1,900 acres and its perimeter is over 24 kilometres long. The entire perimeter is enclosed by a 10-foot wall with an additional two feet of barbed wire on top. The wall is guarded by raised defence pickets at every half and kilometres and the wall is lit up at night with hundreds of lights.
Even though the air force station seems like a heavily guarded impenetrable complex, the fact is that over the years, the boundary wall has been rendered porous and it is no wonder that crossing over or across the wall of the station would have been the least of the problems for terrorists.
Addressing a press conference at the airbase, union defence minister Manohar Parrikar admitted that there have been some “gaps” which he could see but the entire set of facts would be clear only after investigations. “The biggest question before me is that how did these (terrorists) enter the air base?” he said.
The wall, near the main entry of the base is abutting the residential area of Dhaki, earlier a village and now within the municipal limits of Pathankot. The houses in this area are built in a manner that their walls are common with the boundary wall of the air force base. At one point where a house is under construction, the construction material has been stacked next to the air force station boundary wall and all it would take is a skip and hop to get across.
Secondly, the wall on one large tract runs parallel to a seasonal nallah (water channel) which also had inlets inside the complex. These inlets are channelised from under the wall through pipes. But over the years the sand around the pipes has eroded and holes have come up which are large enough for anyone to slip through. While it is generally believed that the terrorists used such an inlet to enter the base, Mangal Singh Bajwa, a resident of Dhaki says that these inlets have been converted into breeding grounds to pigs and generally the owners of the pigs live close by. “If the terrorists entered the base through the inlet, they would have been noticed,” he pointed out.
The lighting of the wall is also not complete, said Ashwani Sharma, BJP president of Dhaki ward who lives barely a hundred meters from the wall. “There are many times when the lights go bust and are not repaired for months. We used to think that we are living next to an air force base and are safe, not realising that we are living in such an unsafe place which will be attacked by terrorists,” said Sharma.
Parrikar’s tough
posers to BSF, military officials
INFILTRATION Defence minister perturbed over Punjab’s porous border
NEW DELHI: Defence minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday posed tough questions to the Border Security Force (BSF) and top brass of the Air Force and Army on continued cross-border infiltration and security along the perimeter of the Pathankot airbase, which was breached by terrorists.
Parrikar visited the air base even as forces continued mopping up operation at the airfield following one of the worst terrorist attack on a defence installation in the country in recent times.
Top South Block sources said Parrikar wanted to find out whether the Defence Security Corps personnel at the Pathankot base had been put on alert after an alarm was sounded by New Delhi on an impending terror attack on January 1 afternoon.
Both the defence minister and home minister Rajnath Singh are extremely perturbed over continued infiltration of terrorists through the international border in Punjab despite patrolling by the BSF and want serious investigation on whether the terror network was mixed up with the thriving drug-smuggling network along the border.
Parrikar also questioned the Western Command Air Force brass on whether the DSC was put on alert and how did the JeM terrorists enter the airbase which had eight feet walls and round-the-clock patrolling.
Only one Air Force jawan died in directly fighting the Pakistani terrorists. While the NSG managed to kill all six terrorists, there are some unanswered questions in the run-up to the attack.
Firstly, killed taxi driver Ekagar Singh received seven calls from Pakistan on his phone on December 31 and his vehicle was found with a puncture at a totally different direction from where he was to pick up a passenger.
The question that is being asked by the internal security establishment is whether Ekagar Singh had gone to pick up the terrorists or was he involved in any drug smuggling network across the border.
Secondly, why did the terrorists not touch the Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh but tried to slit the throat of his jeweller friend Rajesh Verma. Thirdly, the Jaish-e-Mohammed note left by terrorists in the SP’s vehicle talks about attacks in Tangdhar, Samba, Kathua and Delhi in revenge for hanged Afzal Guru. This raises questions if Delhi is the next target of Azhar Masood’s cadres?