A look at the border district of Gurdaspur

Some 40km from the Pathankot Air Force station, along the India Pakistan border, the rural Punjab landscape is abuzz with massive search operations by the Border Security Force as they sweep acres of land and water for signs of any suspicious activity. The camouflage BSF uniforms dot the landscape of Bamiyal village, a BSF outpost that runs along the India Pakistan border, as scores of men move about the gleaming green vegetation and brilliant blue sky. Part of the northernmost Punjab district, Gurdaspur, the Bamiyal border is supposedly one of the likely spots from where the terrorists who attacked the air force station entered India.

The stunning landscape, its iridescent green fields, tall eucalyptus trees, enough birds to fill an ornithology volume is a picture of bucolic activity -- farmers tend to the young wheat, youths go about on the bicycles and motorbikes, a tractor with speakers attached shatters the peace with classic Punjabi pop. All the while BSF men weave their way about these fields.

The BSF, on Monday, submitted a report to the centre claiming there was no breach in the fence but there were some gaping holes along the international border and malfunctioning of electronic surveillance equipment. The BSF men dna met on Thursday, said the same. In unwelcome spotlight, as questions have raised as to how the border was breached, the jawans said that they had been working since January 1 to find any clues.

An official said that the search ops, that started at 5am on the 1st, would continue for a while as there was a need for a "definite answer".

This is hardly the first time BSF has conducted such searches along these border stretches. In July 2015, Dinanagar town, 25km from Bamiyal, was attacked by terrorists, showing how compromised the Gurdaspur district border was. Then the BSF had conducted a review of 38 points along the 560km Punjab border, that had rivers, rivulets, canals flowing between India and Pakistan. The report was to prevent similar attacks from occurring.

The barbed wire Indian fence loomed almost a metre over the searching men, investigating even pieces of garbage floating in the narrow canal, covered in overgrown reeds and elephant grass, that runs along the border.

The men alternately joked about the stench coming from the spot used regularly by villagers to commune with nature, mere metres away from the fence, and grimaced at it.

These canals litter the landscape, and are a bane for the BSF. Privately, officers admit that the water makes it a tough job to guard this border. In Gurdaspur district and parts of Amritsar district, the Ravi river cuts through the border eight times. Then there are the numerous tributaries and rivulets.

Two such river bodies, the Ujh and the Jaliya, also run by Bamiyal.

There can be no fence over the river, said BSF officers. Instead, they described, such spots are manned on both sides of the border, the posts are brightly lit and there concertina coils -- collapsible coils of barbed wire -- in the water.

However, as reports and accounts by local have pointed out, these arrangements can often be washed away by the water. Sources in the local police too said that much of the wire and materials that the BSF uses is so old as to be easily damaged. Additionally, local life frequent transgresses the border, as the land belongs to farmers who often cross the Indian fence to work in the border line before the Pakistan fence, as a BSF officer pointed out to dna on Thursday.

For now, with the security stepped up, all stretches of the border near Bamiyal, such as in the neighbouring Channi village, are ship-shape, with heavy BSF presence on the roads and in villages.

However, the order of this Punjab district, reeling under the second attack in less than a year, is far from foolproof.