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| Untold story of Pak ultras abducting Indian villager from home close to Jammu border | | | Bharat Bhushan
jammu, July 7: A thorough look at the official "document", detailing Devi Singh's abduction by three militants from his residence at Pansar, situated close to the International Border (IB) in Kathua, reveals how easily the armed Pakistanis had sneaked into India and then taken him across the border without being seen by the "alert" guards.
The IB is about 200 yards from his house and a BSF post is also nearby. He was watching the one-day cricket match between India and Kenya on March 23, 2003, when, to attend the call of nature, he came out of his room at about 11.30 pm and went to the field outside.
However, before he could get back to his room and join his wife Sarishta Pathania who too was watching the match, he was called by three armed men. As they wore Army uniforms, he mistook them as soldiers.
They asked him to guide them to any nearby place where Gujjars lived. Though he pointed towards the house of a Gujjar, who lived in his neighbourhood, they asked him to accompany them.
The document said while Devi was taking them to the Gujjar's house, they abducted him on gun point and took him to Pakistan where a vehicle already waited for them.
The militants were inside the Indian territory for more than half an hour but they were not seen by the border guards.
Senior BSF officers had later come out in the defence of their personnel deployed in the area, claiming that no such incident had taken place at Pansar.
While police, BSF and family thought he was no more and had been killed by someone, he returned to Pansar over an year after his abduction and surrendered before a BSF patrol near Paharpur outpost.
He was then whisked away by BSF men to their post and later shifted to the joint interrogation centre (JIC) here. During questioning by police and other security agencies at the JIC, he revealed that when they were about 200 yards into the Pak territory, he was blindfolded and made to sit in a vehicle which was already waiting for them. In the vehicle, there were three more armed militants, including driver, he said.
He said the six militants took him to a house and handed him over to its incharge Qari Suleman, who in turn locked him in a store.
A few days after his stay with him, Suleman told him that he was at Shakkargarh. The militants too visited him regularly and sought information from him about the BSF deployment on the IB, fencing of borders and the number of troops guarding Thein Dam and Jasrota Dam.
After about a month, or so, he was shifted from Shakkargarh to Lahore where he came to know the names of his three abductors as Shamsher of Lahore, Yassar of Shakkargarh and Uzaiffa of Lahore.
He lived in Lahore also, where he was locked in a house. However, the militants later engaged him as a gardener for planting vegetables and flowers in the house.
Though Shamsher, Yassar and Uzaiffa visited him almost daily, Saad Bhai and Hanjala, both militants, stayed with him and often asked him about the BSF deployment on the IB. They always tried to know about the nature of border fencing and troops deployed to guard it.
Saad Bhai and Hanjula persuaded him to work for Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) with the promise to pay handsome money in return. He, however, refused.
In June 2003, he was shifted to an old building at Manwal Khokhey, Zaffarwal and again locked in a room. Hanjula, Suleman and Shamsher also stayed in the same building. There again he was pressurised to work for them.
He was told that till he agreed to work for them, they would not set him free. He said he gave his consent one day as this was the only way to his freedom.
The militants then gave him two tasks: Act as a guide to the infiltrating LeT militants up to the Jammu-Kathua stretch of the national highway and dump in his house arms and ammunition which Pak-based LeT cadres would deliver him from to time. The highway is about 6 km from his residence.
After meetings with him, the LeT cadres became sure that they had succeeded in cultivating him as their guide on the Indian side of the IB. Then in March 2004, Shamsher and Haider -- a militant of Punjab in Pakistan -- accompanied him up to the IB. Before letting him enter the Indian territory, the duo asked him to come back after meeting his family at Pansar as his job of a militant guide was to begin soon.
However, soon after coming over to this side of the IB, Devi surrendered before BSF and gave a detailed account of his abduction and one year stay in different Pak areas.
This was the first reported abduction by Pak militants from any Jammu border village. It had surprised the security agencies because the kidnapping looked difficult in view of the border fencing and round-the-clock BSF patrolling, a senior police officer said when reached for comments on the incident.
To prevent the recurrence of such incidents, there were now round-the-clock border patrolling of police, SPOs, VDCs and BSF, he added. |
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