BSF and police officers during the exercise in Hiranagar
The Border Security Force (BSF) and Jammu and Kashmir Police have started a joint anti-tunnelling exercise along the international border at various places in the state to detect any cross-border tunnel originating from Pakistan.
Top BSF officials said such exercises are conducted from time to time, and the latest searches have come following revelations by a truck driver, who was arrested recently, that he had carried at least 30 militants from Kathua’s Hiranagar area to the Kashmir Valley in the past, before last month’s terror attack at Jhajjar Kotli along the Jammu-Srinagar national highway.
The truck driver was identified as Riaz Ahmed, a resident of Pulwama. He was arrested for carrying three men in his vehicle from Hiranagar area. The trio, according to officials, opened fire on some police personnel at Jhajjar Kotli before they were killed in a joint operation by the police, CRPF and Army. During questioning, Riaz is learnt to have revealed that he had in the past carried nearly 30 suspected militants from Hiranagar in Kathua to the Valley in four or five trips.
The police said the three militants gunned down in Jhajjar Kotli were Pakistani nationals, and they had sneaked into the state through the Tarnah nullah, which flows into Pakistan from Bobiya area.
Deputy Inspector General of BSF Akhilesh Singh said, “This (anti-tunnelling exercise) has been our normal practice but recently we asked others (agencies) to join the BSF in the exercise, as there was no semblance in reports that terrorists who attacked Jhajjar Kotli had come in from the international border (in Hiranagar).”
Singh said, “We checked the area and found the barbed wire intact. There was also no underground cross-border tunnel. We sought help from other agencies to find it out. If there is any long tunnel in the area, it is the duty of all (agencies) to find it.”
He said the exercise is not time-bound and will continue in future. The anti-tunnel exercise has come ahead of the durbar move from Srinagar to Jammu.