Caught in this cross-fire, officials say, are some disturbing aspects of the attack and the circumstances around it. Consider the following:

• The main road passing through the camp — linking Rampur to Khagapur — continues to be a public thoroughfare although the matter of restricting access was taken up with the local administration and police at a recent meeting but to no effect. “The centre is next to a railway line and the main road through the camp is a public thoroughfare. We had put up a picket outside the campus to tackle possible militant threats,” said Inspector General (Operations) AP Maheshwari. This picket was over-run this morning.

• This assumes significance given the importance of the Rampur centre, one of the three in the state — the other two are at Bijnore (Lucknow) and Allahabad. Recruitments were last done here on December 26 and there were intelligence inputs that terrorists were targeting security force recruitment centres.

• Although the CRPF has 43 such group centres nationwide, right next to the scene of the attack is one of CRPF’s two Central Weapons Stores (CWS) — the other one is in Pune. The CWS is guarded by three companies of the force. The Rampur centre is a key supplier of arms and ammunition to units, including those deployed in J&K. Says UP’s Principal Secretary (Home) J N Chamber: “The Rampur CRPF centre is the best unit of the country’s best paramilitary force.”

• Incidentally, today’s attack is the first time that terrorists have targeted a security force camp outside J&K and Naxal-affected states where the force is involved in counter-insurgency operations.

• “Militants have attacked operational bases in Jammu and Kashmir in the past but they have been repulsed. They now seem to have decided to hit soft targets,” Maheshwari said. Suicide bombers had entered the makeshift headquarters of the 144 battalion of the CRPF in a hotel along the Dal Lake in October. Both were killed after a gunbattle. In July, alleged Lashkar militants tried to sneak into a CRPF camp on the outskirts of Srinagar but were shot dead.

• Investigators are also looking at the fact that this is the first time that terrorists have struck in western UP. “So far, all major terror attacks took place in different cities of Eastern UP; Western UP was where they took shelter and carried out indoctrination,” a senior police officer said. Rampur’s neighbouring districts, including Amroha and Moradabad, are considered to be terrorist hideouts.

•Security agencies have not ruled out the involvement of militant outfits like the Harkat ul-Jehad-i-Islami (HuJI), Lashkar-e-Toiba or the Jaish but — in the pattern of recent terror strikes — are also looking at the possibility of local groups.

Two alleged Lashkar men Masood Ahmad and Mohammad Syed, both Pakistan nationals, had escaped from police custody in February last year. “Masood Ahmad had been convicted for an attack on the Jharoda Kalan CRPF camp in 2001,” a police official said. Both are on the run.