Tibri search over, ‘ultras’ may have fled

Gurdaspur : The massive search operation launched by the Army, BSF and Punjab Police to locate suspected terrorists in the area was called off today with senior officers claiming that the three-hour delay in informing the police had proved costly.
The incident, which came in the aftermath of the Pathankot air base attack, kept the city and its suburbs on tenterhooks for nearly 72 hours. By 4 pm, the last of the Armymen left the spot, indicating how the colossal exercise involving the usage of high-tech equipment, including drone cameras, had proved futile. Officers had no answer as to how the drone picked up movements in the 15-acre sugarcane fields on the basis of which the operation lingered on for three days.
Unlike the July 27 (2015) Dinanagar attack, a clear chain of command was followed this time. The final orders were executed by the Army, though senior police officers and the BSF too were kept in the loop.At the break of dawn, decks had been cleared for a SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team to launch an assault. But the attack never materialised and the SWAT team entered the fields in two armoured vehicles and mowed down nearly 20 acres of standing crop.
After two hours, a five-minute meeting of Army and BSF commanders and the police officers was held wherein the decision to exit the operation was taken.
Officials are now claiming that the delay made by Satnam Singh, a resident of Pandher village near Tibri military area, to inform the police on January 6 evening about some suspicious movement proved costly.“The terrorists might have exited the cane fields in those three hours and could have moved to another location,” said a police officer. Questions are also being raised about the statement made by Lovepreet Singh (18), another resident who claimed that two men had beaten him up with a rifle butt last night when he was returning home from Tibri Cantonment. With injury marks visible on his neck, he had maintained that he was riding a motorcycle when the men stepped out of the fields and attacked him. He was taken to the Army cantonment yesterday as well as today for questioning.