The Border Security Force (BSF) on Sunday claimed detecting yet another ‘suspected tunnel’ along the 198-km stretch of International Border (IB) with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir’s Samba district. The tunnel may have been used for pushing in militants by Pakistan, it said.
BSF officials said that a patrolling party of the paramilitary force found a small tunnel in Regal area of Samba on the IB. “The tunnel is located close to the IB and is suspected to have been used for infiltration,” they said, adding that senior officers have rushed to the spot and investigation into the matter is going on.
“The tunnel, 2.5 metre wide and 25 to 30 metre deep, was properly engineered. To evade detection, its opening was found surrounded with elephant grass,” the IG BSF said. J&K’s Director General of Police, Dilbag Singh, said it is a 150-metre long underground tunnel which was unearthed following investigations into the recent encounter near a toll plaza in Nagrota area along Jammu-Srinagar highway.
The four Kashmir-bound Pakistani terrorists were killed in a gunfight when the truck in which they were travelling was stopped for checking at Ban toll plaza on the Jammu-Srinagar highway on Thursday. A huge cache of arms and ammunition was recovered from the possession of the slain terrorists, who had come to execute a “big plan” to disrupt the upcoming District Development Council polls, the police said.
Mr. Singh after inspecting the tunnel scene along with BSF Inspector General, Jammu frontier, N S Jamwal, and Inspector General of Police, Jammu range, Mukesh Singh said, “The J&K police shared some vital inputs found from the encounter site with the BSF which after hectic efforts, managed to find the tunnel.”.
The BSF claimed it found cement bags with Pakistani factory markings on these deep inside the tunnel.
