Punjab deploys SWAT team to hunt down suspected terrorists

Extensive search operations are underway near Pandher village in Gurdaspur district of Punjab for the third day on Friday after locals claimed that two men in army fatigues were moving in a suspicious manner.

In this joint operation of Punjab Police and Army, security officials have been carrying out combing operation around the Tibri Cantonment area, police said.

"Our search operation is going on. We are also doing aerial reconnaissance to locate any suspicious movement," DIG, BorderRange, Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh said on Friday.

The search operations are also going on in a nearby sugarcane field where the suspects may be hiding, police said.

"We are mainly searching sugarcane field (to locate the movement of any suspect)," Gurdaspur SSP Gurpreet Singh Toor said.

In this joint operation with the army, Punjab Police has deployed its Israel-trained SWAT team which have been especially trained to neutralise terrorists.

"We have deployed our own SWAT teams for this operation along with other state police personnels," DIG said.

Punjab's SWAT team had played a major role in neutralising terrorists who had carried out attack at Dinanagar in the month of July last year.

"We are taking every information very seriously and our effort is to either authenticate (the presence of terrorists) or completely rule it out," Deputy Inspector General Of Police Border Range said.

Acting on information, Punjab police led by DIG Kunwar Singh launched a major combing operation on Thursday night at a house near the Tibri cantonment area.

"There was some information that they (suspects) had slipped into a villager's house. We launched a search operation around that area which took long six hours. However, they (suspects) were not found in that area," the DIG said, adding, "The entire night, our search operation remained on."

"Our combing operation will continue and we are at this moment not ruling out any thing," DIG said.

Locals in a village near Tibri cantonment of Gurdaspur district on Wednesday had reported sighting of two men in army uniform moving in suspicious manner, following which Army and police began the search operation.

Gurdaspur was targeted by Pakistani terrorists in July last year when a police station here was attacked while Pathankot was witness to a terror strike on Air base on last Saturday.

The security forces have installed floodlights in that area to see any suspicious movement during the night, police said, adding the vehicles were being checked out thoroughly.

A farmer, Satnam Singh, of Pandher village was the first one to make the claim of having seen two men in army fatigues moving in suspicious manner, police had said.

Pandher village is situated about one-and-a-half km away from the Tibri cantonment.

Six terrorists in army fatigues attacked the Air Base in Pathankot on Saturday last, leading to an encounter that lasted over four days.