Baptism by fire for Punjab’s elite SWAT
The Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team (a hitherto unknown unit) of the Punjab Police formed around four years ago emerged hero in the operation against the terrorists who attacked Dinanagar police station today.
In fact, this happened to be the first-ever anti-terrorist operation of SWAT since its inception in 2011. The unit consists of about 80 highly trained elite commandos who are armed with better weapons and trained to strike with precision. It was the Punjab Police’ faith in this unit that refrained it from handing over the counter-terrorist operation to the Army.
DGP Sumedh Singh Saini, who directed the operation at Dinanagar, had overseen the conceptualisation and training of this elite unit. None of the unit members suffered any injury in the operation.
Luck played part in the deployment of the elite commandos for the operation, but they were deployed with a major hiccup. Twenty-eight of them were attending a joint training camp with the National Security Guard (NSG) in Amritsar district for the past few days. They were rushed to Dinanagar to take control of the situation.
As they were carrying light weapons for the training, they launched the initial operation with those weapons only. The assault with full might came after heavy weaponry was sent from Chandigarh.
Police sources said the SWAT unit’s training and tactical deployment was similar to the expertise of highly trained security forces. The police formed this unit as it wanted preparedness for any eventuality like today’s attack. It was one of the SWAT commandos who shot dead the first terrorist before the remaining two were killed in a grenade attack.
“We are fully equipped to handle such terror attack,” said a police official explaining why they did not let the Army control of the situation. “The genesis of SWAT is said to be in the Mumbai terror attack when it was felt that such a unit should be in place with the state police to combat terror attacks,” he added.
The police official, however, said the role of the Army in the operation was also to be acknowledged. “A small unit of the Army stationed atop a five-storey building helped immensely in the operation by firing regularly at the terrorists through their light machine guns. The Army provided a cover fire to the SWAT commandos that helped in completing the operation,” said a police official.
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