Early Times Report
srinagar, June 28: Even as the Home Minister Rajnath Singh has already set up a three-member team to look into the recent militant attack at Pampore, which left eight CRPF personnel dead and another 21 injured, the state government already had intelligence inputs of the possible Fidayeen attack on the highway.
Official sources said on June 25, when the heavily armed militants attacked the bus carrying the personnel of 161 battalion of CRPF at Frestbal, 14km from Srinagar, the police was already busy with search operations on the highway while a Road Opening Party (ROP) of the paramilitary was equally on vigil in the area.
"We had general inputs of the possible attack and thus we had intensified the vigil," said a top official.
Sources said senior police officials including Superintendent of Police Awantipora Sridhar Patil were personally on patrol on the highway, when two heavily armed Lashkar-e-TaibaFidayeen took the paramilitary bus by surprise.
The SP had erected a Naka just 300 meters away from the encounter spot. Another Naka in the vicinity was being monitored by the SHO Pampore. A CRPF bunker, on the other hand, was also on alert in the wake of intelligence inputs.
When militants managed to execute their plans at around 4: 30 PM, SP Awantipora and his escort, at once rushed to the nearby encounter spot. A police official said they saw one of the militants near the front door of the bus, seemingly trying to make entry into the vehicle to cause more damage inside. But he was neutralized by the security forces, during the encounter which lasted for around 20 minutes.
While Director General of Police K Rajendra Kumar has termed the Pampore ambush a "snake's attack" at a place where vehicles have to slow down their speed due to huge traffic inflow, the Union Home Ministry has taken a serious note of the incident.
The attack has left the security agencies on tenterhooks as the annual Shrine Amaranth Yatra is round the corner and Pampore highway happens to be a strategic route to the revered cave shrine in south Kashmir.
Meanwhile, the Home Minister Rajnath Singh today reviewed the prevailing situation in Jammu and Kashmir, in the wake of the deadly attack, and directed security forces to intensify vigil in the state.
Officials sources said the three-member team set up by the Home Ministry which will look into lapses, is if any, so that corrective steps could be taken, is on way to the Valley. |
