Gurdaspur terrorists may have planned to attack two temples and a college

The Gurdaspur terrorists’ primary targets might have been two temples and a college, suggests the data from the Global Positioning System (GPS) devices recovered from the terrorists killed in the attack. [caption id=“attachment_2380140” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. PTI[/caption] Some of the places that showed up in the GPS co-ordinates were Sajoti Mata ji temple, Chhotu Nath Mandir and SSM college in Dinanagar, reported The Times of India. In fact, the GPS logs showed that the devices had co-ordinates of 13 places in Punjab stored in them. Moreover, agencies investigating the terror attack also suspected that the terrorists might have hijacked the Dinanagar police station in desperation after being spotted. Their real plan could have been something much more sinister: to hijack college students and target the two temples. An earlier PTI report had also said that the terrorists had plans to attack the civil lines area in the district headquarters town besides the Dinanagar police station. The GPS devices the terrorists were carrying were switched on after they crossed into India from Pakistan, probably through a canal of the Ravi river, sources had told PTI. The Ravi flows down from Himachal Pradesh to the Jammu border before entering Punjab at Madhopur. It criss-crosses the Indo-Pak border thrice before finally flowing into Pakistan ahead of Gurudaspur and merges with Chenab river. As the currents were very strong, security agencies believe they used one of the canals to enter India and then switched on the two GPS devices, which had been recovered from the encounter site at Dina Nagar on Monday. The tracking point on one of the devices had showed Talwandi point, Parmanand village and Dina Nagar, while the other had Gurudaspur Civil Lines marked, indicating that the area was also their target. The 15 km stretch from the point they crossed over into India at Bamiyal was covered by the terrorists on foot before they planted five Improvised Explosive Devices on Talwandi-Amritsar railway track, investigators had said. A night vision device had also been recovered from the railway track. The terrorists had made every attempt to conceal their identities and had even removed markings from their clothes including underwears. They were not carrying any food items except for some loose dry fruits. The terrorists were carrying three AK 47 rifles, several Chinese-made grenades, besides 10 magazines with more than 200 rounds of ammunition. (With inputs from PTI)