CHANDIGARH; The Army and security forces are launching an “intense operation” throughout Punjab to flush out militants, the director general of Punjab Police, K.P.S.Gill, said Sunday.
“Now the task before use is to take the help of the Army and further intensify operations against the militants,” Gill said during an informal chat with newsmen here.
Gill, who was re-appointed Punjab Police chief last month, said the Army was available in all the districts in Punjab and would aid the civil administration in the tasks assigned to it.
He said that he along with other senior officers of the state administration had held several meetings with the Army corps commanders and their officers to work out a “closely coordinated plan of action, which will be shortly put into operation”.
ARMY TOTRAIN: Gill said that the Army, which was well dispersed all over the state, has also agreed to train and improve the skills of Punjab Police personnel in use of sophisticated weapons, operational tactics and field craft.
Recent anti-militant operations had met with “success” and combing of peripheral areas of bigger cities was going on, he said.
According to Gill, militants had set up their bases close to the cities and return there after striking at their targets. This was specially happening in Amritsar, Ludhiana and Jalandhar, he said.
“We are also pushing out police patrols at night in all districts and at the same time concentrating on Amritsar as the Beas-Amritsar road has been affected,” he said, MORE SECURITY: Gill said that a further increase in the deployment of security personnel was on the cards and sophisticated weapons like the self-loading rifles would be added to the armory of the state police.
“We believe that a combination of self-loading rifles, carbines and 303 rifles are more than a match for the AK-47s supplied from across the border”.
The intensive operations against militants would continue in well-planned manners on the basis of intelligence reports which were flowing in as the people were fed up With militancy, extortions and kidnappings, Gill said.
: Gill, however, expressed satisfaction that barbed-wire fencing and floodlighting of 382 kms of the 554 kms of the Punjab border with Pakistan had proved “very effective” in checking infiltration and exfiltration of militants.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 6, 1991
