Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Ludhiana School, Live Cartridges Haul may not be Punjab Terror Revival

Call it the Independence Day effect or the beefing up of security operations, 265 live cartridges found next to a Ludhiana school will raise many eyebrows. Especially when the school happens to be the Kundav Vidya Mandir in the city’s high security area of civil lines.


Security agencies have become alert ever since the news broke and are doing their share of investigations. The suspicious bag left by the side of the school bag contained bullets meant to be used in a wide variety of weapons including AK 47. Surely this kind of cache recovered days before the nation celebrates its independence day needs to be taken seriously.

This also has an added significance as it comes about a fortnight from Gurdaspur attack by terrorists from Pakistan. On July 27 2015, 3 gunmen dressed in army uniforms took siege in Dinanagar police station after spreading terror in nearby areas. 3 civilians and 4 policemen including superintendent of police lost their lives in on that day. All gunmen were killed after a day-long operations and the area was sanitised subsequently.

A few days later a similar kind of scare was revisited when local villagers near Pathankot reportedly saw gunmen moving around in suspicious manner. Search operations followed without any fruits.

The questions are many and so would be the reasons and arbitrary logics. Firstly is Punjab going back to the days of terror? In my opinion not probably… as in Dinanagar attack was a very peculiar one. If one goes by the clues out in the news, the place terrorists crossed border was one of the easiest routes across to India. The crossing point is equidistant from Jammu and Dinanagar. Recent trends indicates heightened terror activities in and around Jammu region. Though remote, there is a possibility that despite GPS assistance, the 3 Pakistani gunmen strayed eastwards touching Gurdaspur Pathankot highway rather than going northwards on to the Pathankot-Jammu Highway right on to the border of J&K. The reason I say so is the fact most of us would have experienced straying off-course while relying on GPS. Even I did a terrible blunder while travelling from Abu to Jaipur, it resulted in a horrible situation in the middle of night. I ended up 20 odd kms off from the expected track about couple of years back.

As far as Pathankot goes it happens to be one of the biggest military cantonments in the area. Hailing from the same region I can vouch for similar kind of army movements, which can raise suspicion. Or it could be a genuine terrorist movement trying to entre J&K from the other side of the state via north Punjab and Himachal route. Nothing can be surely said till the time one finds real answers to this particular scare.

I call myself inherently optimistic with extreme patience, sometimes even exasperating for people and believe in giving benefit of doubt to all till proven guilty. On the same lines I attribute the Ludhiana school bullet haul as a desperate dumping of someone’s terrorism days possession amidst all the security concerns in the state fearing police action. One definite clue would be to ascertain the age of the live cartridges recovered outside Ludhiana school.

I might be proven wrong in all these cases, but this is my gut feeling and it might be true in all senses.  And if so, then there is hardly anything for Punjab to worry as such. However, for J&K it might not be a great situation, they would remain in deep shit for longer if it is so.



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