Police station in Punjab’s border district of Tarn Taran hit by ‘rocket launcher’

It was around 1 am that a projectile hit the Sarhali Police Station on the Amritsar-Bathinda Highway in Tarn Taran District.

According to the police, unknown miscreants fired a rocket-launcher-type weapon at the police station in Sarhali from National Highway 54 (ASR-Bathinda) owing to which the inside wall, mirrors of the doors of sanjh kendra and a door scroll were broken. No injuries have been reported yet.

The rocket that was used to attack the police station. (Express Photo)

Following this, a police team, led by the SSP of Tarn Taran, reached the spot and recovered the rocket from inside the police station and a pipe-type article (part of the rocket-launcher-type weapon) from the National Highway.

The rocket launcher hit the iron gate of the police station and struck the sanjh kendra. At the time of the attack, SHO Prakash Singh, the duty officer, and eight police personnel were present inside the police station.

Earlier this year, on May 8, a Rocket-Propelled Grenade (RPG) was fired at the Punjab Police’s Intelligence headquarters in Mohali. Since the attack took place late in the evening after the office hours, there was no casualty. Officers had said that the grenade, which damaged part of a wall and glass panes, was launched from a car in the parking lot.

Police personnel at the Crime Investigation Agency office at Nawanshahr also had a narrow escape when a grenade was hurled at the main gate on the night of November 7 last year. Two weeks later, another grenade was thrown by motorcycle-borne assailants near the Triveni gate of the Army’s cantonment in Pathankot on November 21, 2021.

In another similar attack on March 9, 2022, the police post at Kalma Morh in Ropar on the Nurpur Bedi-Nangal road was attacked, damaging its side wall.

Noone was injured in all the three attacks.