Pathankot:
A man was detained this evening by the army at the gate of the Pathankot Air Force base, the location of this weekend's deadly attack in which seven military personnel were martyred and another 20 injured by six terrorists from Pakistan. Sources said the man was drunk who mistakenly ventured too near the air force station.
The area around the base was tense today - a search operation was launched 40 km away from the base in a village in Gurdaspur in Punjab near the border with Pakistan, after locals reported that two men, dressed in fatigues, were acting suspiciously near the cantonment area in Tibri. Sources said that the search revealed no anomaly.
On the night of December 31, a police officer from Gurdaspur was on his way home from visiting a shrine near the border with Pakistan when he says he was abducted, along with two companions, by the Pakistani terrorists. Salwinder Singh, Superintendent of Police, says the men were armed with Ak-47s and hijacked his car and snatched his cellphones - intel officers confirm the phones were later used by the terrorists to call their handlers. They went on to enter the air force base where they began firing at dawn on Saturday.
Despite the intercepted calls made by the terrorists and the complaint filed by the abducted police officer, his case was treated for hours like an armed robbery. However, interrogators from the National Investigating Agency who have spoken with Mr Singh says his account of his abduction and what followed has revealed deep inconsistencies.