CHANDIGARH India: Sikh freedom fighters that nearly killed Punjab’s Police Chief last week also jammed police radio networks and broadcast warnings over top-secret frequencies in a sign of their ability to breach security at will a senior police Official said today.

The official, who did not want to be named, told Reuters that the communications breach occurred ‘on September 30, three days before State Police Chief Julio Ribeiro and his wife were hurt in a daring attack by freedom fighters disguised as policemen.

He said the entire radio-phone network Amritsar, the worst hit district, was jammed for half an hour that morning an unidentified voice broke into the “secure” channel to inform police he was broadcasting for “Radio Khalsa.

Khalistan is the name of the independent Sikh nation the freedom fighters seek. More than 500 people have been killed this year in violence triggered by the campaign for independence.

“The voice said ‘This is an ‘example of how we learn about everything you do” the official said.

He said the same afternoon the VHF (very high frequency) network in Amritsar and Gurdaspur Districts bordering Pakistan was jammed and unusable for half an hour.

The official said most of the 12,000 PAP men were recruited from border districts and some ‘were likely to be linked to freedom fighters.

He said the jamming of the radio networks and the attack on Ribeiro appeared to be signals that the freedom fighters were ready to ‘mount a major counter-offensive after a two-month long police crackdown that has sharply brought down violence

Forty people were killed in Punjab August and September compared with 62 in July and 95 in June.

The official said the I will in Violence was used by the freedom fighters to “lie low, regroup and wait”, “Our information is that they have reorganized into about 30 smaller and more mobile groups of about 10 men each,” he said. “The chain of command is designed so that the gunmen actually involved in an attack very often do not know who is giving them their orders”

He said in another bid to throw off their pursuers, the freedom fighters had recently set up their “tactical headquarters” in the South-Eastern Punjab town of Punjab which lies outside their traditional strongholds along the Pakistan border.

‘They avoid attention by not staging any attacks in their base, only using it as a spring boards,” the official said.

“Our wireless operators said the extremists used a very powerful device to jam our top-secret radio frequencies,” the official said. “We were left helpless and groping”.

He said the security breach occurred despite frequent changes made in police wavelengths to throw off possible interception.

The official said the radio phones were used for secret communications by senior police officials and the VHF network for ‘communication with mobile patrols combing the two districts for wanted freedom fighters.

“You can imagine what would happen if there is a major attack and we are unable to communicate with our forces,” he said.

Article extracted from this publication >> October 10, 1986