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Terror strike on CRPF camp in UP : Eight killed

	January 07, 2008

The new year began on a tragic note for one of northern India’s biggest Central Reserve Police Force camps at Rampur, in Uttar Pradesh, when four militants gunned down seven jawans and a civilian. The camp had been left virtually unguarded despite two intelligence warnings in a month that it was a prime target.



There was a blame-game between the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh Government on who was responsible for the security lapse. State Chief Minister Mayawati said intelligence warnings about the possibility of a terrorist attack had been passed on to the CRPF authorities who apparently did not take adequate steps to avert the attack. Central leaders, specially of the Congress party, said that law and order is the responsibility of the State government which should have taken adequate steps to see that such incidents did not take place.



The pre-dawn raiders killed a rickshaw-puller sleeping on the roadside before attacking the Rampur camp, where jawans woken up by the initial firing dismissed it as firecrackers set off by New Year revelers.



By the time the force had come up with some token resistance - with only 20-odd from the camp’s 1,000 jawans engaging the enemy - the militants had killed, in ones and twos, the few sentries manning the gate and offices on celebration night.



The raiders seem to have easily escaped after a 50-minute gun battle left another five jawans injured.



Union Home Ministry officials said that in an end-November advisory on militant targets, they had specifically mentioned the CRPF training and recruitment centre in Rampur, 200km east of Delhi and famous for the Rampuri switchblade knife.



District officials said they had forwarded two warnings to the central force, in November and December. “Someone kept the gates open despite that,” collector Ram Sanjeevan said.



A CRPF source said the attackers wore the paramilitary force’s uniform but this couldn’t be confirmed.



A grenade lobbed at the sandbagged picket killed its single sentry. The raiders then fired and moved about freely, killing two in one office, two more at another and a sixth and seventh in the DIG’s office or “control room”.



Some officers expressed surprise that the attackers, who seemed to have a free run of the camp, showed no interest in raiding the armoury.



Other than its 1,000 troops, the camp housed 500 trainees, too, having just completed a recruitment drive.



District officials said they had received a faxed message from Lucknow in end-November that relayed the conversation bet¬ween two militants intercepted in Srinagar days earlier.



Officials at CRPF headquarters in Delhi said they had re¬ceived a “general” warning that did not mention the camp.



Officers said the raiders were from either the Lashkar-e-Toiba or the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which alone had such firepower or fidayeen cadre.





Shift in jehadi groups strategy



Observers say that the attack on the Central Reserve Police Force camp at Rampur marks a paradigm shift in strategy and tactics of jehadi groups, hellbent on making Uttar Pradesh their major theatre of operation - the four terrorists who escaped are believed to be part of a fidayeen squad.



This is the second fidayeen attack after the failed attempt at Ayodhya’s Ramjanmabhoomi complex on July 5, 2005. Five terror¬ists were killed then.



The state has been on the terror radar for 14 years. A fresh tide of attacks has made it the worst affected state besides Jammu and Kashmir. Security experts are baffled at the sheer intensity of terror groups and their growing presence in UP, which they say has become the best bet in keeping the ‘cause alive’.



“It is surprising UP has suffered a major terrorist attack when J&K has had none in five months. It is a clear pointer that the terror groups are making up in UP for what they have been denied in the Valley and other places by the security forces,” said a source. Statistics support this theory with security forces neutralising more than 80 terror modules in UP alone in the last three years.



Most of the modules taken care of were in cities of western UP where groups had inherited the infrastructure developed by the Harkat-ul-Ansar in 1993. All the current major players in UP - the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkat-ul-Jehad Islami and the Hizbul Mujahideen - are splinter groups of the Harkat-ul-Ansar while Lashkar-e-Taiba created its own base using SIMI’s infrastructure.





Naxalites kill four policemen in Bihar



On the same day, i.e. Jan 1, naxalites killed at least four policemen in Bihar and attacked a police post in Munger. The police said, more than 100 naxalites attacked the Bariapur police post which was keeping a vigil over a picnic spot in Rishikund, about 30 km. away, where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate New Year.



Babbar Khalsa plot foiled



Delhi police have arrested four suspected militants includ¬ing a Haryana Government employee, alleged to be involved in a Babbar Khalsa plot to eliminate political and religious personal¬ities in Punjab. The police did not reveal names of the persons that were on the hitlist of the militants except the name of Baba Piara Singh Paniharewala, a Ropar-based religious leader.



On the hit list of the terrorists were four other prominent personalities of Punjab, the police said.



Addressing a press conference, Joint Commissioner (Special Cell) Karnal Singh said the terrorists - Baljeet Singh, Bikkar Singh, Kulwinderjeet Singh and Tirlochan Singh - had carried out a dry run and were planning to assassinate the religious leader. “The four monitored the security arrangements for the religious leader and planned to smuggle in weapons in a milk container,” said Karnal Singh, who, citing security reasons, refused to disclose the other targets.



Acting on specific information, the police arrested Baljeet and Bikkar at Patiala and Sangrur in Punjab. Kulwinderjeet and Tirlochan were arrested in Ludhiana in Punjab, and Panchkula in Haryana.





Ludhiana blast case arrests



In another breakthrough, Punjab Police on Dec. 30 claimed to have solved the Shingar Cinema blast case with the arrest of four suspected activists of Babar Khalsa International (BKI). Announcing the arrest of the four - Gurpreet alias Khalsa, Pal¬winder Singh, Sandeep Singh alias Harry and Ravinder alias Rinku, DGP N.S. Aulakh said the motive behind the October 14 blast, which killed six people and injured 37, was to revive terrorism and to create communal tension.



Aulakh said some prominent religious leaders like Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh were on the hit list of the BKI operatives.





BJP criticises UPA’s soft policies



The BJP has said that both the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh Government are responsible for the lapse in security which re¬sulted in the killing by terrorists of eight people in Rampur. Party president Rajnath Singh, addressing a farmers’ rally in Raichur on Jan. 3, said that terrorism was on the rise and internal security had weakened since the UPA came to power at the Centre. He said the UPA government had failed to control terror¬ism and strengthen internal security.



In New Delhi, BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that the party would organise a nationwide campaign against terrorism to build the popular mood against the UPA government’s soft policies. He said the BJP national executive and national council would be meeting in New Delhi from Jan. 27 to Jan. 29 where the strategy to counter government’s inaction on terror would be discussed and finalised.





Chhattisgarh seeks more central forces to deal with Naxals



The Chhattisgarh government has sought nine more battalions of Central forces immediately to deal with increasing naxalite activities in the State.



State Chief Secretary Shivraj Singh and Director-General of Police Vishwa Ranjan made the demand during a meeting with Union Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar in New Delhi on Thursday, Jan. 3.



It was the first meeting after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had entrusted to the Cabinet Secretary the responsibility of tackling Chhattisgarh’s left-wing extremism following an emotion¬al speech by State Chief Minister Raman Singh at the Chief Min¬isters’ conference last month.



Raman Singh had sought additional forces, but made it clear that the war against the naxalites would be fought with or with¬out Central help.



Estimates showed that 18,000 sq. km. in Bastar, Dantewada, Narayanpur and Bijapur districts were under naxalite control, and this had to be reclaimed before any developmental work could be started there.



A well-trained force that could take on the extremists in one of the most inhospitable terrain had been the State’s demand for long.