Sandipan Sharma - Punjab: Did smugglers unknowingly aid, abet Pathankot attack?
Sherlock Holmes
would have called it the curious case of Pathankot. He would have found the
conduct of the police intriguing, noticed disturbing similarities between the
attack on Dinanagar and the strike on the air base at Pathankot and said:
Watson, there is something really rotten in the state of Punjab.
First, of course, is
the incident involving Punjab SP Salwinder Singh, who was first abducted and
then released by the purported terrorists. The SP, according to reports and his
own statement, was stopped by armed militants, gagged, blindfolded and later
released. The SP claims he was moving around unarmed well past midnight because
he was on a pilgrimage.
But why did the
terrorists let such a high-profile target go unhurt? Why did they risk their
entire mission by giving him the opportunity to raise an alarm? Only a detailed
investigation can reveal if the SP was actually out on pilgrimage or on some
other personal mission; and whether his survival was just happenstance or there
was a reason behind the unexpected display of mercy by terrorists.
Experts have already pointed out at the inability of the
Punjab police to track the militants after Salwinder Singh reported the
carjacking. One explanation for the delay is that the cops did not believe the
SP. Really? Have things become so rotten in Punjab that even a SP warning of an
imminent terror strike is not taken seriously? Notice also the attempt to
downplay the kidnapping of an SP — not a constable or a junior officer — and
keeping the matter hush-hush for almost 12 hours. Is there any other state in
India where an SP would be ridiculed for reporting his own abduction by
terrorists from Pakistan?
The Pathankot attack was almost identical to the terror
strike in Dinanagar in July 2015. Before entering the mainland, these militants
too had spent some time hiding in the border villages, a clear indication that
they were hosted by sleeper cells on the Indian side. In that incident too, terrorists had hijacked a white Maruti
and later stormed a police station, killing nine persons. Would the Punjab
government not have been alarmed by the hijacking after the Dinanagar incident,
especially when an SP was raising the alarm?
When terrorists had struck in Dinanagar, eyebrows were
raised when the Punjab police refused to let the army intervene and took on the
militants in spite of lack of adequate counter-insurgency training and weapons.
Back then the Punjab police decision was attributed to bravado. But now
questions have started surfacing.
A former Punjab DGP I spoke to had a volley of unanswered
questions: "Why was the identity of the terrorists never revealed? Who
were they, where had they come from? Why wasn't the case handed over to the
National Investigation Agency? Why did the Punjab government insist getting the
case probe by its own agencies? Is it just coincidence that all the militants
were killed and nobody tried to capture even one of them alive? It seems there
was an attempt to hide something," he said.
All these questions about Dinanagar and Pathankot seem to
have a common link: the flourishing drug trade between Pakistan and Punjab.
And some of the answers may be found in the modus operandi of the drug
dealers. When a consignment of drugs leaves Pakistan for Punjab, it
usually takes two routes. In areas where there are barbed wires on the border,
smugglers stuff them into PVC pipes and push them across into India, where
couriers pick them up for transporting them to the main land.
Though most of the Punjab border is guarded by barbed wires,
the riverine belt of around 100km is unguarded. To push drugs through this
region, drained by Ravi and Beas and lined with dense forests, smugglers use
boats and couriers. This riverine belt is mostly to the west of Gurdaspur and
Pathankot, and in some areas of Ferozepur, making them most vulnerable.
Transporting drugs to the border from Pakistan is not a
problem since the ISI and many other agencies are involved in the trade. But,
once the drug consignment reaches Punjab, the involvement of a huge network of
people at every level becomes necessary. In the border areas of Punjab, it is stored in safe houses
for some time -- called a cooling off period -- and then relayed from point to
point through an intricate network of middlemen and peddlers, who charge the
dealers on the basis of the risk and distance involved.
According to sources, many politicians and police officials
have been compromised by the drug dealers. In 2007, the state intelligence had
compiled a four-page list of politicians, bureaucrats and cops who were part of
the drug cartels. It had names of politicians of all parties and officers and
cops at every level. But, somehow the list went missing.
Opposition parties have regularly alleged that members of
the Badal family are shielding drug dealers. In 2014, Bikram Majithia,
brother-in-law of deputy CM Sukhbir Badal, was questioned by the Enforcement
Directorate in connection with the sale and supply of synthetic drugs in the
state.
In March 2015, he was accused of receiving the drug money by
arrested synthetic druglord Jagjit Singh Chahal. Chahal, in a written statement
to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), has claimed that he had made a payment of
Rs 35 lakh to Majithia between 2007 and 2012. According to reports, Chahal had also said he had supplied
pseudoephedrine (a chemical used to make drugs) to Satpreet Singh Satta and
Parminder Singh Pindi, who are close to Majithia.
So, there is widespread apprehension that dealers have infiltrated
the Punjab government and are calling the shots. And this network was in
likelihood abetting the safe transit of terrorists from Pakistan to Gurdaspur.
In return they got a huge consignment of drugs.
If the Centre has to ensure that Punjab doesn't get attacked
again, it will have to find answers to the disturbing questions about the
Pathankot and Dinanagar incidents. Only a thorough probe into the conduct of
the state police, laxity of the Punjab government and the influence and extent
of drug mafia will guarantee safety of our border. As Sherlock would have said, begin from the top.
