AMRITSAR: The bullet-proof tractors, often referred to as the “deadly battle tanks of the Punjab. Police, which were successfully used to flush out militants from high rising crops, will now patrol the major highways and link roads of the state.
State Director General of Police (DGP) K.P.S.Gill said, “We have to keep these machines in running order else it would just amount to wasteful expenditure.” With the militants no longer around, it has been decided that the bullet-proof tractors would be used for patrol- ling sensitive highways and village link roads, he said.
Gill said that these tractors would now be particularly useful in pa- trolling the highways at night. This strategy assures significance with the State Government deciding to ply its buses at night on certain routes after a gap of 11 years. Commenting on the success rate of the tractors which were introduced in 1990, Gill said that had it not been for these machines, it would have been virtually impossible to tackle the well-armed militants hiding in sugarcane fields their favorite hideout.
Moreover, they helped to reduce the casualty rate of the security forces and with these machines at their disposal the policemen were not afraid of going into the agricultural fields, he added. The tractors were also used for approaching hide- outs located in the interior of a village. Also the tractors did the job of evacuating the injured from a militants’ hideout to safety.
A brainchild of Gill himself, it was during a fierce 40-hour-long en- counter at Nikki Chabal village of Tarn Taran police district in the rainy season in 1989 that the ideas stuck him. Gill, who himself was present during this encounter, saw the difficulty with which the National Security Guards (NSG) Commandos tackled and killed the six Babbar Khalsa militants who were well entrenched in a fodder field.
According to Gill, the Punjab Pot lice acquired a total of 100 bullet-proof tractors at an estimated cost of Rs 2.5 lakhs per tractor with the bullet proofing for each tractor costing about Rs 70,000.
A few of these machines were also made available to the Uttar Pradesh Police after the militants started fleeing Punjab and taking shelter in the Terai belt of that state.
The bullet-proof tractors proved nowhere more successful than in the police districts of Majitha, Tam Taran and Batala, a sugarcane growing area. These tractors were first pressed into service in these three police districts before being introduced in the rest of the state.
In the Bullowali encounter in Majitha police district the tractors proved their real worth and in dingdong 30-hour-long battle with six militants hiding in a eight acre plot of sugarcane, these deadly machines alúmately triumphed. The last major encounter that the tractors fought was at Chhrewa village of Batala police district in 1993 during which eight militants hiding in a house in this village were killed.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 2, 1994
