Follow Us
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, August 3
While the Punjab Police are earning accolades for their handling of the Dinanagar terror attack, it has come to light that despite an intelligence alert about such an attack, the police station where the terrorists were holed up had been left in the hands of ill-equipped Home Guards with only one man from the regular Punjab Police force present.
The police station has a strength of about 65 personnel, but only seven were present. From among the regular force, only one — Munshi Ram Lal — was present in the wee hours of July 27 when the terrorists struck.
Six Home Guards were inside the police station rooms, out of whom three were resting. All of them had returned from night patrolling a short while ago. They had one carbine and two .303 rifles.
Of the six, three died fighting the terrorists as they were the only ones present there.
Sources said the terrorists took over the police station after easily injuring or killing all those who were present there. They insist the Home Guards took the brunt of casualties as they were six of the seven present there.
Though DGP Sumedh Saini had launched night domination with much fanfare last year and everyone who mattered in the state knew about the intelligence alert about a possible terror attack, the force at the police station was missing.
The Home Guards were conducting the tough job of night patrolling with just a carbine and two .303 rifles.
Mystery shrouds the whereabouts of the policemen who left the police station so badly manned. Sources reveal that some police personnel could have faked bullet injuries to show they were present at the encounter spots.
Sources insist that some policemen, including SHO Mukhtiar Singh, were not present but they sustained bullet injuries later. However, the injuries do not seem to have been caused by the bullets used by the three terrorists. The Police Department has quietly buried the matter.
The SHO of the police station, Mukhtiar Singh, claimed that the reports about him being absent from the police station were wrong. “I was there along with a duty officer. We were standing next to the police station when the terrorists fired. We fired back. I sustained a bullet injury,” he claimed.
He claimed that the total strength was about 65, including three women constables. “I was at the police station along with my duty officer, the munshi and the Home Guards. The remaining personnel were not supposed to be at the police station at that hour. Like other police stations, the force is divided for various duties all day.”
DGP visits Dinanagar, meets four SSPs
DGP Sumedh Singh Saini visited the Dinanagar police station on Monday. He came around 1 pm and immediately held a meeting with SSPs of four police districts — Inderbir Singh (Batala), Gurpreet Singh Toor (Gurdaspur), Jasdeep Singh (Amritsar Rural) and Rakesh Kaushal (Pathankot).
2
4
7
9