NEW DELHI: Pathankot Airbase former commander Air Commodore J S Dhamoon has been dismissed from service after an (National Investigation Agency) IAF inquiry allegedly indicted him and others for failure of command and control as well as several security lapses during the attack.
The government had asked IAF to conduct a proper court of inquiry (COI) into the January 2 terror attack, during which the security forces had taken almost three days to kill the four militants while losing seven of their own personnel, to pinpoint lapses by different officers in the airbase.
The National Investigation Agency, of course, conducted the overall probe into the terror attack, which had come soon after PM Narendra Modi made an unscheduled trip to Lahore to attend the wedding of Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter as a goodwill gesture in December 2015.
Source said the IAF inquiry, apart from naming Air Commodore Dhamoon, has held there were a series of security lapses in and around the sprawling airbase despite it being on a high alert – which included spy drones in the air for surveillance – after prior intelligence about an impending terror strike on a military installation in the Pathankot area.
The lapses ranged from failure to follow basic standard operating procedures and plug “vulnerable perimeter gaps” to inadequate flood-lighting and the inability of the IAF Guard commandos to initially pin down and isolate the attackers, who had gained entry into the airbase by using branches of trees adjacent to the outer main wall, said sources.
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