A Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) constable guarding the main gate of an Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) centre said on Tuesday that two people had fired at him in the early hours.
No one was killed or injured in the ‘attack’, prompting the police to wonder if the attack indeed took place or if it was constable Bhagwan Jadhav’s “figment of imagination”.
According to Jadhav’s police statement, at 3.30am, he found two strangers talking to each other a little distance from the front gate of the facility in Bylalu, Ramanagaram, roughly 25 km from Bangalore. When he asked them for their identity, they fired at him “with a small arm, either a pistol or revolver, without provocation”. He said he fired eight rounds at them and they fled from the scene.
Denying the possibility of a terror attack — a view supported by Union home minister P Chidambaram in the Lok Sabha — additional director-general of police (law and order) AR Infant said Jadhav could have been hallucinating. He said when Jadhav fired from his service rifle, an assistant sub-inspector, Naik, and a head constable patrolling the area rushed to the main gate. Naik found Jadhav shaky.
Sub-inspector Anil Kumar of the nearest Tavarekere police station rushed to the spot within 15 minutes of being informed.
According to the police and other CISF personnel, at the time of the incident, trucks were entering and exiting the facility because construction is going on there. “The sand-laden trucks come in and go out till late in the morning... We suspect (Jadhav’s) strangers might have come by a truck and were waiting for being taken away from the facility,” a police officer said.
“They might have been stranded outside the facility as there is no entry for anyone other than a truck’s driver and workers being carried in it.”
The facility houses Isro’s deep space network for the Chandrayaan moon mission. It was the key centre downloading the data pertaining to the discovery of water on the moon.
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