A villager shows the damaged part of the fence at Kanachak. (PTI)

Kanachak, on the International Boundary in Jammu, Aug. 28: The livewires that run through it are three aluminium cables that are electrified at night. They are stretched and knotted this afternoon like the barbed wire held up by the bullet-marked metal pillars.

On the concrete pathway between parallel rows of pillars that go south and north for miles, the roll of concertina coil is today tied with a piece of wire where it was snapped.

And the border guard who supervise the fence along the international boundary with Pakistan here are digging trenches from this morning to build five more sentry posts — as if India is bolting the stable.

This is the point through which the terrorists who took children hostage yesterday allegedly infiltrated. “I was at that post there,” Warnikar, the Border Security Force havildar from Dhule in Maharashtra points to a shed with a corrugated aluminium sheet held up by four bamboo stilts at four corners.

His “post” faces the point where the fence is cut and is about 50 metres behind it.

“And the bullets rained down from there” — his left, where the fence turns inwards into India — “and there,” his right where the fence is a concave arc from pillar to pillar. “We could barely stand, there was so much firing that night,” the night of August 25 and 26, “we could barely keep our heads up”. The firing began 15 minutes past midnight. In the morning, from just a single plot of land 20 metres by 30 metres tilled by farmer Ram Kishen, they found 140 casings.

“It was like it used to be three or four years back,” says Ram Kishen who also owns a plot beyond the fence in which he is growing brinjal.

But he cannot find workers today. Kishen, 40, was in Madyala where he went to primary school, near Pakistan-held Sialkot, at the time of the 1971 war. The fence here is around Pakistan’s Sialkot sector that is like a finger of Pakistani territory surrounded by India on three sides.

The zero line is beyond the fence. At the point where it was cut near Lalyal, it is five metres away and marked by a Sambal tree. At the BSF company headquarters in Beli Azmat, 2km south, from where reinforcements came, the zero line is 600 metres from the fence.

“Even when I came with reinforcements,” says BSF deputy commandant Narain of the 141 battalion, “they were still firing”. It went on for about two hours.

The firing came in from a wide arc of about 600 metres, at first from across a sand berm now covered with elephant grass that runs parallel to the fence but outside it.

Between 1995 and 2002, when the fence was being erected, the bundh was built to shield the workers from firing from the Pakistani side. The bundh is now a handicap because it does not allow the sentries in “nakas” on flat ground to look into Pakistani territory. Only the sentries on pickets on the bundh or on towers can see that far.

Though India calls this stretch the International Boundary, Pakistan disputes the border here, referring to it as a “working boundary”. The Line of Control begins roughly 15km north of this point.

“I would say there were at least 25 to 30 people who were firing on our posts and because, as you can see, the fence zigs and zags we cannot be sure where the fire will come from. It was dark and rainy and our men were being bitten by mosquitoes,” says a platoon commander. “We were firing away too, but we were blinded, though the fence is well lit.”

Bullets that come from the Pakistani side do not come postmarked, he says.

“We know we were fired at from there. How can we say if it were the militants or the Pakistani rangers,” says F company’s commanding officer assistant commandant Narendra Kumar. “But we heard jihadi slogans.”

Next morning, the morning of August 26, the Pakistani Rangers, the Pakistani borderguard, raised a Blue flag, to signal they want a flag meeting. The Indian BSF use an Orange flag to signal if they want a meeting. It was the Pakistanis who came in all flustered to the meeting on the zero line.

“Puree raat bardasht kar li aap ki firing lekin bardashtgi ki bhi had hoti hai (I have tolerated your firing all night but even tolerance has it limits),” Pakistan Rangers’ wing commander Tariq Ahmad Abbasi (their ranks are like air force designations) stormed, a BSF officer at the meeting recalls.

The Pakistani officer was told the BSF was retaliating to their fire and said they suspected the Rangers were giving covering fire to the infiltrators. “Nahin ji, khuda ki kasam, Allah ki kasam, hum apna ghar kyon barbad karenge (No, sir, in the name of God, why would we want to destroy our own house)?” the BSF officer quotes Abbasi as saying.

On the evening of August 26, there was another flag meeting, this time at a junior level, among the company commanders, as against the morning’s at the level of the battalion commanders.

Neither India nor Pakistan has blamed either side of a ceasefire violation. But only yesterday, children and women were taken hostage and seven men were killed.