Pathankot: Did locals conduct reconnaissance of air force station?

Pathankot, Jan 18: The Pathankot attack would not have been possible without a reconnaissance, investigating officers say. The National Investigating Agency (NIA), which is probing the case, say that one or two of the terrorists part of the attack along with others may have conducted a reconnaissance of the air force station a few weeks prior to the attack.

Investigators suspect that the two terrorists, who reached the air force station ahead of the four others, may have been part of the team that conducted the reconnaissance.

We are also probing to find out if any locals were part of this exercise, the NIA official also informed OneIndia.

A thorough reconnaissance:

The manner in which the terrorists reached the air base suggests that they knew their way around. Two terrorists had reached the air force station on Jan 1 itself and this could have been intentional, the investigator added.

It appears that they wanted to take position and then guide the rest of the terrorists into the air force station.

However, there was a delay in the other four terrorists reaching the spot. The four terrorists, who were in the vehicle that they had stolen from Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police, Salwinder Singh, had forgotten their communication device in the car.

This led to a delay as they were unable to communicate with the two other terrorists who were already at the spot.

An attack that was planned for Jan 1 took place at 3:30 AM on Jan 2, 2016.

The investigators say that they suspect that the terrorists could have had local help while conducting the reconnaissance.

They seemed to know the entry points at the air force station which has a wall of almost 15 kilometres.

They also managed to enter the air force station and hide in the military engineers services shed for several hours and this is an indicator that they knew their way around, the officer also added.

OneIndia News