The security forces, led by NSG, had neutralised four terrorists on Saturday in a fierce gun battle that left 7 security personnel dead and 20 injured.
The over three-day long Pathankot airbase siege by Pakistan terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) fidayeens appeared over on Monday evening, when security forces recovered one mutilated body and spotted another inside the rubble of a building that was blown up by the Army.
The security forces, led by NSG, had neutralised four terrorists on Saturday in a fierce gun battle that left 7 security personnel dead and 20 injured.
The government, wiser after the Saturday faux pas, has not called the operation as over yet even as sources said that presence of more terrorists inside the airbase cannot be ruled out.
The final mop-up operation will be undertaken on Tuesday before declaring the airbase sanitised and safe, said sources.
Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Manohar Parrikar, who had jumped the gun by declaring the anti-terror operation over on Saturday, chose not to comment and avoided the media.
Defending the over 72-hour long operation, security officials said it was illogical to put such questions as anti-terror operations inside a high-value strategic area sometimes take days to keep the collateral damage to a minimum.
“The airbase has a 24km-long periphery and houses 1,500 residents. In such a situation, what matters is the end result. Casualties are expected to be there when there is a fidayeen attack. It finally boils down to a battle of nerves and allow them to make mistakes under pressure,” said a senior security official keeping tabs on the counter-terror operations.
The officials, however, conceded that had the airbase been under the security of regular commandos instead of retired personnel of defence security corps (DSC), it would have been very difficult for terrorists to enter the area.
The officials have no answers for innumerable security lapses that followed the intelligence alert of December 30 and the intervening period of 12 hours between the SP’s abduction and first encounter with terrorists at the airbase. They agreed that the BSF, the Punjab Police and the Air Force have a lot to answer for not being able to convert specific intelligence into actionable intelligence and nab or neutralise the terrorists before they got inside the airbase.
Sources involved in the investigations said, the terrorists were dropped on Pakistan side of the international border in two separate cars from where they moved in two different groups. They were well-equipped with ammunition, improvised AK-47s, grenades, mortars and dry fruits.
In all likelihood, first group entered the airbase even before the alert was sounded after SP Salwinder Singh’s abduction.
Finding too many gaping holes in the construction of events and suspecting several possibilities, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed three separate FIRs — SP Salwinder Singh’s kidnapping, kidnapping and killing of Innova driver Ikagar Singh and attack on the airbase.
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