PESHAWAR: Militants applied features introduced in PlayerUnknown’s BattleGround, a video game commonly known as PUBG, to attack a police station in Swat, according to senior officials.

They said that militants used PUBG’s chat room for communication to avoid electronic surveillance and being tracked down.

On August 28, Banr police station in Swat came under a militant attack, which left a policeman martyred and two others wounded.

According to district police, investigation was launched into the attack and militants were traced after monitoring of CCTV footages of different surveillance cameras for several hours.

DPO says they traced an attacker with the help of CCTV footage

The district police officer of Swat, Dr Zahidullah, said police found one person using a mobile phone and they believed that it would help them to hunt down the militants. However, militants never called each other but utilised features of PUBG to avoid being traced, he added.

“The militants would play PUBG to practice and motivate their group members for battle against the state and would use the chat room for communication,” Mr Zahidullah told Dawn. He added that it was too difficult to reach the target and arrest militants in absence of clues.

He said that initially, investigators were focusing on a motorbike, which in the CCTV footages passed in front of the police station minutes before explosion took place. He said that the investigators believed a hand grenade had been lobbed at the police station. However, it was not the case, he added.

Mr Zahidullah said that it was difficult to find out as to what was actually used for the attack because there was nothing on ground which could prove that a hand grenade was used in the attack.

“They had used an improvised explosive device, made of a power bank, which is mostly used for charging mobile phones, for the attack” he said. He added that one of the suspected militant was finally traced through several CCTV footages.

The district police officer stated that during investigation, the accused revealed names of two other suspected militants, who were also arrested and shared with the investigation team that they never used common means for communication and would change mobile phones and heir Sims repeatedly.

“They had created a chat room in PUBG for communication and exchanging messages,” he said. He said that the militants belonged to a local, Murad alias Rehmatullah group, affiliated with the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. He said that Murad, head of the group, and family members of the suspected militants, were living across the border in Afghanistan.

“We have proved that suspected militants remained in contact with their family members and Rehmatullah group in Afghanistan and that they never travelled to Afghanistan but Karachi,” he said.

Mr Zahidullah also stated that family members of the suspected militants were involved in militant activities and were wanted by law enforcement agencies. He added that suspected militants’ family members escaped Operation Rah-i-Rast, a military onslaught against militants in Swat in 2009. He said that around 2,000 families of militants belonging to Swat were residing in Afghanistan.

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2024