Jammu:
The audacious twin attacks on a police station and an Army camp in Jammu on Thursday were neither pre-planned nor pre-determined, as the precision with which the terrorists struck suggested at first, security agencies now say.
The three terrorists, believed to have crossed over the border hours before they struck, attacked a police station in Hiranagar, killed four cops and two others. They then traveled 20 km and attacked the camp of the 16th Cavalry armoured corp unit and shot dead four Armymen including a Leiutenant Colonel, and engaged the Army in a nine-hour gun battle before they were shot dead.
That they did all this without local help or any challenge or major resistance is posing some very uncomfortable questions for the security establishment. Initial investigations have also revealed that no alarm was raised by the Jammu and Kashmir police after the terrorists escaped from the Hiranagar police station.
"The general direction of their movement was known, it was also known that they had commandeered an impounded truck from the police station premises and yet no alarm was raised," a senior union home ministry official associated with the investigation told NDTV.
A tempo driver named Mohan Chand Sharma, whose vehicle the terrorists hijacked in Jandi near the border with Pakistan, has reportedly told investigators that the three men asked him to drive to the nearest Army Camp, a gun to his head.
Mr Sharma allegedly tried to bluff his way out telling the terrorists that there were no military installations in the vicinity. The attackers then settled for the police station in Hiranagar, after they spotted some cops in uniform.
Before they disembarked, they shot Mr Sharma.
"Details emerging from Sharma and the truck driver who was commandeered from the Hiranagar police station clearly show that the attackers had no specific army installation in mind and did not know the lay of the land," the official said.
Like Mr Sharma, the driver of the truck that that they hijacked in Hiranagar was reportedly ordered to take them to the "nearest military installation." Unlike Mr Sharma, the truck driver was not shot once they reached Samba camp because, he has allegedly told investigators, he identified himself as a Muslim.