‘Attack could have been prevented’

Mincing no words, Jammu and Kashmir governor N.N. Vohra on Tuesday said that the audacious Pathankot terror strike could have been prevented if lessons had been learnt from previous such attacks with focus on securing the country’s border with Pakistan which is not yet “well-guarded”.

Mr Vohra was not only pointing towards the infiltration that has been happening resulting in terror strikes in Kathua, Samba, Dinanagar and then Pathankot, he also hinted at the tardy investigation into these cases that allowed terrorists to exploit the infiltration routes again and again.

He said had there been ‘’tight investigation’’ into the previous attacks, the attack on Dina Nagar police station in Gurdaspur could have been avoided.

Notably, while the NIA is probing the Pathankot strike and the Kathua and Samba probe, the Punjab police is probing the Dinanagar attack refusing to hand over the investigation to the NIA.

The NIA is grappling to join the dots of the seperate incidents even as the Punjab government has so far refused to hand over the Gurdaspur terror probe to it.

Meanwhile, the NIA on Tuesday subjected senior Punjab police officer Salwinder Singh to a lie-detector test in connection with the NIA’s probe in the Pathankot attack. He was being questioned by a team of experts from the Central Forensic and Scientific Laboratory and the questioning will continue Wednesday, official sources said.

They said that the senior police official was being questioned to ascertain the sequence of events that took place after he was kidnapped on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1 by Pakistan-based terrorists.