The Border Security Forces (BSF) on Saturday detected an underground 20-feet deep and 150-metre long tunnel near the international border in Samba district’s Bengalad area in Jammu and Kashmir.

As per the military officials, the force has launched a major search operation in the area to look for other such hidden structures.

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BSF Director General Rakesh Asthana has directed his frontier commanders to ensure that the anti-infiltration grid is intact and there are no gaps along this front, they added.

As per the reports, some sandbags with markings ‘Shakkergarh’ and ‘Karachi’, cities in Pakistan were also found from the spot.

The nearest Pakistani post across the border was nearly 400 metres from the tunnel, officials added.

The tunnel was unearthed after BSF got suspicious after noticing the sinking of the earth at some places due to the recent incessant rains.

The officers immediately called for the earth moving machine to unearth the tunnel after the spot inspection revealed that there is a tunnel beneath the soil.

The tunnel, as per sources, has a depth of about 20 feet at the opening and has been located near the “whaleback” border post of the BSF.

The force has launched a mega search operation along the International Border in this area to detect any other such clandestine structure.

BSF Inspector General (Jammu) NS Jamwal also visited the spot to oversee the operation.

The force has been conducting a mega “anti-tunnel drive” in the IB areas of Jammu and other places after five armed infiltrators were recently killed by it along this front in Punjab.

The entire BSF formation deployed across the 3,300 km International Border that runs along Jammu, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat is on extra alert as there are multiple intelligence inputs of terrorists trying to breach the IB and infiltrate into India, officials said.

As reported by news agency PTI, the border force is also looking at deploying ground penetrating radars to detect tunnels along this sensitive front which is prone to infiltration by terrorists from Pakistan and cross-border smuggling of arms and narcotics.

This is not the first case of detecting tunnel at the India-Pakistan border as earlier in 2012, a 400-metre long tunnel in Samba sector was unearthed while in 2014, another near Line of Control in Palanwala sector.

(With inputs from PTI)