New Delhi: A few hours after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated two pilot projects of Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System (CIBMS) programme, Pakistan Rangers murdered a BSF jawan a few kilometres away from the hi-tech fencing. 

According to sources, Pakistan Rangers killed BSF jawan Narender Kumar in a bid to stop India’s ambitious fencing programme. “The BSF jawan was killed by Pakistan Rangers probably early in the morning of Tuesday. Just a few hours ago, the CIBMS programme had been launched. It seems Pakistan Rangers killed our man to force us to stop the programme,” a top security force officer responsible for Army operations in Jammu & Kashmir said under the condition of anonymity.

Adding to this, the officer said that Pakistan refused to participate in a joint patrolling along the international border to trace the jawan.

About 14-16 hours into the CIBMS, Pakistan Rangers killed BSF Head Constable almost 25 km away from the venue of inauguration of the programme. According to sources, the body of Head Constable Narender Kumar bears three bullet marks.

“There is no second opinion that BSF retaliates strongly to Pakistani firing, but CIBMS will now reduce casualties of our jawans, their stress will go down and the dependence on physical patrolling will go down too,” the home minister had said after inaugurating the CIBMS programme.

According to a government statement, a total of 2,026 km border is vulnerable to infiltration, cross-border firing and Pakistan-sponsored terrorist activities. The digital fencing technology will be utilised along such long stretches of borders.

In the two projects, each covering a 5.5 km border stretch along the international border, CIBMS will use a number of different devices for surveillance, communication and data storage. Sensors like thermal imager, UGS, fibre optic sensors, radar, sonar have been mounted on different platforms like Aerostat, tower, poles etc.

News suppressed?

Sources say for the first time, the postmortem of a jawan was conducted at the Majra Post, not at the district hospital. This was done in the case of the BSF head constable to prevent the news of brutality of his murder by Pakistanis from spreading, causing outrage nationwide. 

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