Punjab Police girding up to take cross-border terror head on

The front wooden door of the Dinanagar police station in Gurdaspur district stands dotted with bullet scars—a mute testimony of the first terror strike in Punjab by three Pakistani fidayeen on July 27 last year.
The cops proudly refer as “wounds” to the bullet marks and the bowl-like hole on the cemented floor near the entry point created by the first hand grenade that the ultras, armed with AK-56 rifles and armour-piercing ammunition, had lobbed to gain entry.
Stunned but not scared, the police and the home guards fought back determinedly with whatever they had and killed the terrorists in the dawn-to-dusk gun battle .
But this attack was a wake-up call to the border state police and its ruling political masters. And, the January 2 Pathankot airbase attack only confirmed the Pakistan’s intent to spread the jihadi arc to the frontier state.
The two back-to-back terror attacks in a span of six months laid bare the gaping holes in the state’s 553-km border with Pakistan, prompting police to draw out a long-term strategy.
“Our objective is to build an effective second line of defence. The focus is on training the cops and equipping them with latest weapons. We have taken necessary steps post-Dinanagar,” HS Dhillon, director general of police (law and order) told Hindustan Times.
The front wooden door of the Dinanagar police station in Gurdaspur district stands dotted with bullet scars—a mute testimony of the first terror strike in Punjab by three Pakistani fidayeen on July 27 last year.
The cops proudly refer as “wounds” to the bullet marks and the bowl-like hole on the cemented floor near the entry point created by the first hand grenade that the ultras, armed with AK-56 rifles and armour-piercing ammunition, had lobbed to gain entry.
Stunned but not scared, the police and the home guards fought back determinedly with whatever they had and killed the terrorists in the dawn-to-dusk gun battle .
But this attack was a wake-up call to the border state police and its ruling political masters. And, the January 2 Pathankot airbase attack only confirmed the Pakistan’s intent to spread the jihadi arc to the frontier state.
The two back-to-back terror attacks in a span of six months laid bare the gaping holes in the state’s 553-km border with Pakistan, prompting police to draw out a long-term strategy.
“Our objective is to build an effective second line of defence. The focus is on training the cops and equipping them with latest weapons. We have taken necessary steps post-Dinanagar,” HS Dhillon, director general of police (law and order) told Hindustan Times.