November 29, 2020 4:45:39 am
The entrance to a tunnel that was discovered near a BSF outpost in the Samba sector last week.
WHEN SECURITY forces tracked down a GPS device recovered from the four Jaish terrorists who were shot and killed in Jammu’s Nagrota on November 19, they came to a narrow opening leading to a 200m long tunnel near an outpost from BSF in the Samba sector.
The discovery did not take them by surprise.
This was the sixth tunnel that the BSF had discovered in the past four years along the Jammu border. And since the first such construction was discovered in Punjab in 1997, in the wake of the Khalistan movement and the beginning of militancy in Kashmir, BSF records show the discovery of at least 12 key cross-border tunnels.
Officials say that with strict border surveillance in place now, these tunnels have become a crucial route for militants carrying weapons and ammunition to launch attacks in the Valley. “Detecting tunnels on a 200 km border with considerable foliage and streams is not easy,” former BSF IG Rakesh Sharma, who has been in command in the Jammu sector, told The Indian Express.
The last tunnel was three feet wide and four feet high, with the small opening reinforced with sandbags. Security forces recovered 11 AK assault rifles, 24 magazines and 7.5 kg of RDX along with 20 m of IED wire and six detonators from the killed militants. They also found a grenade launcher under the barrel, 29 grenades, five rifle grenades, three pistols with six magazines, a wireless device and the GPS.
The previous discovery occurred in the Galar area of the Samba sector on August 27, when the ground around the site began to sink. Just days earlier, the National Investigative Agency (NIA) had said in a charge sheet that the February 2019 Pulwama attackers had used a tunnel on the Jammu border.
“Ground intrusion has become difficult since a robust anti-infiltration network was formed in the last decade, involving trained and alert workforce and state-of-the-art technology. That is why terrorists now use underground methods, ”said former IG Sharma.
According to BSF officers, the first such route to be discovered was on March 12, 1997, in Punjab, when the 70th Battalion discovered a tunnel 116 feet long and two and a half feet in diameter in the Amritsar sector.
The following year, a similar tunnel was detected in the same sector. And the following year, a more elaborate tunnel, 170 m long and three feet in diameter, was found at Gurdaspur. In 2001 another tunnel was found near Chountra, also in Gurdaspur, which was 90 meters long and one meter in diameter. The last tunnel in Punjab was discovered in 2003 in Ferozpur, with a length of 50 m and a height of only two feet.
“In those days, the tunnels weren’t very deep and they didn’t have enough space. Anything less than three feet tall will force him to crawl, which can be difficult at distances, ”said a superior officer.
According to intelligence sources, these tunnels were initially dug by a Pakistani gold and narcotics smuggler, Jacka Masih aka Jacka Isai. But later he was caught by Pakistani forces. Even now, we find his signature in some tunnels. But the tunnels today, which are mainly in Jammu, have signs of engineering input from the Pakistan Rangers, ”the officer said.
On July 22, 2012, the BSF stumbled across the first tunnel along the Jammu border, at Chillayari on Samba. According to officials, it is still the most “sophisticated” tunnel ever found: 255 m long, 2.5 feet wide and 5 feet high, enough for infiltrators to walk. It was excavated to a depth of 25 feet and reinforced with wooden planks, with small tubes leading to the surface to take in air.
“It was clearly made by Pakistan Rangers engineers. Fortunately, we detected it while it was still unfinished. It appeared to be an attempt to make a permanent tunnel, ”said an officer.
“The Punjab border was fenced off as a result of militancy in the 1980s, but the Jammu border was not. So through the peak of Kashmir militancy, you could simply cross if you managed to fool the patrol. But once the Jammu border was closed, the tunnels became an infiltration resource, ”said another official.
The next tunnel, 50 feet long but only two feet high, was found in Jammu in 2016, followed by a similar discovery the same year. Two small tunnels were discovered in 2017 and, after an interval of three years, two more in 2020. “The last two were more sophisticated… Most of the tunnels are in the Samba sector due to the dense terrain. Due to the abundance of streams, the soil is soft and facilitates excavation, ”said an official.
Over the years, the Jammu border has been reinforced with anti-infiltration controls, such as reflectors, thermal imaging cameras, stream lasers, and high-resolution surveillance. “But there is no technology to detect tunnels,” said a senior official.
Following the 2012 discovery, the Home Office tested technology to track tunnels. “The ground sensors of an Israeli company were tested. The company claimed it could detect seismic vibrations. But we found that it was only effective down to a depth of one or two meters, ”said an official.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
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