New Delhi - The Jammu region of India's northern Jammu and Kashmir state was placed on high security alert after two troopers were injured in firing across the border with Pakistan, news reports said Friday. Constables Bandip Gogoi and Rajinder Singh of the Border Security Force (BSF) suffered bullet injuries when a group of unidentified men fired at their border post at Nikowal, about 30 kilometres from the state's winter capital Jammu, late on Thursday, IANS news agency reported.
The BSF troopers returned fire, officials said.
Jammu region was put on high security alert. Police said a group of militants may have crossed the border under cover of the firing, PTI news agency reported.
All entry and exit points to Jammu town were sealed, vehicles were being checked and people frisked.
Additional security had been deployed at the town's main bus and railway stations and some key installations.
A security alert had also been sounded along the international border with Pakistan, a senior BSF official said.
"After last night's lull there was firing again at the same post to which we have again retaliated," the official said.
It was unclear if the firing at the border post was done by militants trying to cross into Jammu and Kashmir or by the Pakistan Rangers, the official added.
"A preliminary assessment points more to militants trying to infiltrate to this side," the official added.
India has erected a barbed wire fence inside Indian territory to check infiltration along the 220-kilometre international border in the Jammu region as well as the 720-kilometre Line of Control, a de facto border that divides the disputed Kashmir region in two parts, one administered by India and the other by Pakistan.
The fencing was completed in 2004 after India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire across the border and line of control in Kashmir. However, the ceasefire has been repeatedly violated since July 2008.
Nuclear-capable South Asian neighbours India and Pakistan have fought three wars since their independence from British rule in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.
India has blamed Pakistan for aiding and abetting separatist Islamic militants, a charge Islamabad denies. Pakistan says the so-called militants are Kashmiri freedom fighters.
More than 40,000 people, including security personnel, civilians and militants, have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir since the violent separatist militancy emerged in the 1980s.
