Punjab Police, BSF averts arm smuggling, recovers cache of arms, ammo from Pakistan border
Counterintelligence wing inspector Inderdeep Singh said the seizure included 22 foreign-made pistols, 100 rounds of ammunition, 44 magazines, and 1-kg of heroin, and 72gm of opium.
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Amritsar, October 20: In a major victory for the security forces, as in joint operation, the Border Security Force (BSF) and the counter-intelligence wing of Punjab Police recovered a cache of arms and ammunition along the barbed wire fence on the Indo-Pak border near Khemkaran village in Tarn Taran district on Wednesday.
Counterintelligence wing inspector Inderdeep Singh said the seizure included 22 foreign-made pistols, 100 rounds of ammunition, 44 magazines, and 1-kg of heroin, and 72gm of opium.
The police had a tip-off that anti-national elements would try to push in a consignment of weapons into Indian territory from across the border. The information was shared with the BSF battalion concerned and a joint search operation was launched in Khemkaran.
Officials suspect that the consignment may have been smuggled with drones. Drone movement from Pakistan has been reported in the Khemkaran sector recently.
Notably, the huge cache of weapons was recovered near the India-Pakistan border days after the Modi government expanded the BSF's jurisdiction from existing 15 km from the border to 50 km. The Ministry of home affairs on October 13 extended BSF's area of operational jurisdiction in three states, Punjab, West Bengal, and Assam.
The central government amended the BSF Act to authorize the BSF to undertake search, seizure, and arrest within a larger 50 km stretch, instead of the existing 15 km, from the International Border in the above-mentioned three states.
According to the new rules, the limit has been reduced from 80 km to 50 km in Gujarat, while it has been kept unchanged at 50 km. The BSF which guards the International Border is not empowered has now been given a free hand to search, arrest and make seizures up to an area of 50 km within Indian territory from IB with Pakistan and Bangladesh.
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