The Border Security Force(BSF)will undertake an anti-IED sweep along hundreds of kilometres of the India-Pakistan border in Punjab following the first-time recovery of such bombs leading to one jawan being injured, official sources said on Thursday.
The force also recently shifted the jurisdiction of about 20.3 kilometres from the total 553 kilometres under its Punjab frontier, headquartered in Jalandhar, to the neighbouring Jammu frontier for “better security coordination” in the riverine areas that run along Pathankot in Punjab. Pathankot abuts Jammu.
The 2,289-kilometre-long India-Pakistan international border runs from Jammu in the north to Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat in the west and the Border Security Force (BSF) is tasked with guarding it. Its Jammu frontier guards 191.66 kilometres of the international border, apart from 40 kilometres of the Line of Control (LoC) along Jammu and Kashmir. “A massive sanitation drive to find possible improvised explosive devices (IED) will be undertaken in the Punjab frontier following the incident on Wednesday where two such bombs were recovered from a farming field ahead of the fence in Gurdaspur district. Anti-sabotage checks are already being undertaken at the site where the IED was detected,” a senior officer said. Officials had said this was the first time that an IED was recovered at this strategic and sensitive border, prone to drugs- and weapons-carrying Pakistani drones and infiltration by terrorists.
About 70 per cent of the 532 kilometres of the international border in Punjab is cultivable and visited by farmers for tilling of the land, according to the officials. A major portion of this fertile land is ahead of the fence and, hence, the BSF will have to ensure that there are no IEDs hidden there that may hurt troops or farmers or local civilians who frequent these areas, they said.
