Army personnel during an encounter with attackers at the police station in Dinanagar town in Gurdaspur district. (Sameer Sehgal/HT Photo)
The three terrorists who stormed a police station in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district had used gloves with “Made in Pakistan” tags and a US-made night vision device that could have been procured from Afghanistan, investigators have said.
The panel of doctors from Gurdaspur civil hospital, which carried out the autopsy of the three Pakistani terrorists, stated in their report about “external appearance” that a “Made in Pakistan” label was found intact in the glove that one terrorist was wearing.
This vital evidence clearly pointed to the involvement of Pakistan in the terror attack, police sources told Hindustan Times.
“After the operation was over on Monday, we had done a random search of the clothes the ultras were wearing. But no label was found in the clothes, including the undergarments,” a police source said.
“The bodies are handed over to the doctors as found. It was while making the inventory and a close examination of the clothes the terrorists were wearing that the doctors found a ‘Made in Pakistan’ tag intact in one glove of a terrorist.”
The night vision device had a unique number (032008 80063 – A325) along with markings such as “warning” and “US government property”. The initial probe indicated that the night vision device originated from strife-torn Afghanistan, sources said.
Investigators have informally shared details of the US-made night vision device with the FBI.
The board of doctors collected DNA samples of the terrorists and submitted a detailed report of the autopsy held on Friday to investigators.
The Punjab Police are now focussing on four key factors: Finding out how the terrorists got the US-made night vision device, a detailed examination of the two global positioning system (GPS) sets found on them, the origin of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher used by them and vital clues brought to the fore by the autopsy.
An analysis of the data on the GPS sets showed that about a dozen waypoints were uploaded on July 21 and that the terrorist crossed the Ravi river through Mastgarh village in the Gurdaspur sector of the international border.
Police are also trying to ascertain the origin of the rocket-propelled grenade launcher found with the terrorists. When the weapon was found, it was in a “ready to launch” status with a live rocket inside it.
“This was placed in a direction...from where the major police offensive was launched. It seems the terrorists wanted to lob this rocket as a last resort to flee from the site of the encounter. Every aspect of this rocket launcher is being examined,” a source said.
The police probe has revealed that the terrorists first planted 2.5kg of RDX to blow up a small railway bridge and left behind the US-made night vision device. They then went to Dinanagar bus stand before storming the police station.
One GPS set has an entry for Gurdaspur, indicating that the terrorists probably would have attacked the town too if they had not been engaged by police during an initial gun battle.
Punjab Police have also associated the Intelligence Bureau, Jammu and Kashmir Police and the CRPF in their investigation, which picked up pace on Thursday evening after the top brass held a lengthy meeting and devised a strategy to fast-track the probe.
Seven people, including a senior police officer, were killed by the three terrorists in Gurdaspur on July 27 before they were gunned down by security forces.
Gurdaspur terrorists used ‘Made in Pakistan’ gloves
