Monthly Archives: August 2018

PTI

Samaan Lateef

Srinagar, March 24

An unidentified infiltrator was killed on Friday after an infiltration bid was foiled by Army in north Kashmir.

The attack took place in Jabdi area along the Line of Control (LoC) of Tangdhar in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district.

The security forces challenged the intruders and in the ensuing gunfight, an infiltrator was killed, officials said. An AK assault rifle and some ammunition were recovered from the spot, they said.

Kashmir has witnessed a sharp decline in ceasefire violations along the LoC since February 2021 when India and Pakistan reaffirmed the 2003 ceasefire agreement along the LoC.

Even infiltration of militants from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir has dropped to single digits as per Army officials.

On February 16, a militant was killed after the Indian Army foiled an infiltration bid along the LoC in Saidpora forward area of Kupwara.

The ceasefire between India and Pakistan has brought relief to the people living in the battle-worn villages along the LoC.

Lashkar terrorist held in Sopore

Baramulla: The J&K Police, in a joint operation with security forces, on Thursday arrested a Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist from Sopore and recovered arms and ammunition from his possession. He was identified as Umer Bashir Bhat, a resident of Manz Seer linked with the proscribed terror outfit LeT. ani

10 packets of narcotics seized in Poonch

Jammu: The Army on Friday seized 10 packets of narcotics from across the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, officials said. Troops launched a search operation along LoC in Doda with the help of sniffer dogs, they said. The search was conducted on the basis of a tip-off.

New Delhi, March 24

Union Home Minister Amit Shah today said security in the ocean needed to be strengthened and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) was “fully committed to totally eliminate the menace under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

The minister, however, contended that controlling the drug menace was not just the Centre’s fight, but also that of the states, society and citizens.

“At least 60-70 per cent of drug smuggling takes place through the sea route,” he said while addressing a regional conference on “Drug Trafficking and National Security” in Bengaluru.

“We need to have a top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top approach, sparing no one,” the minister said, adding there was need to investigate the chain of network down below when a big fish was caught.

“When we catch a big fish, we need to investigate the entire chain of network down below. If drug addiction is not curbed, it will become an incurable ulcer in the body,” he said.

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PTI

Chandigarh, March 23

Fugitive radical preacher and Khalistan sympathiser Amritpal Singh had been targeting drug addicts and rogue ex-servicemen to help him build a gang that could be easily transformed into a terrorist outfit, officials here said on Thursday.

Giving details of his journey and plans that he was likely to execute at the behest of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), they said Amritpal Singh, upon his return from Dubai, started a drug de-addiction centre at his village Jallupur Kehra in Punjab’s Amritsar district.

In a simultaneous operation, he along with his men started looking for ex-servicemen who had been retired from the Army for bad behaviour so that they could be used for imparting arms training, the officials said.

Immediately after his return last year and he taking over the ‘Waris Punjab De’ outfit after the death of actor-activist Deep Sidhu, Amritpal Singh had a cover of two private security officers, and by early this year, the number had gone up to 16.

The surprising part was that seven of his personal security officers were youngsters, who had joined his drug de-addiction centre for rehabilitation, the officials said, adding that during their stay there for treatment they had been imparted training.

The youngsters, admitted at the de-addiction centre, were brainwashed and pushed towards gun culture and also incited to choose the path of slain terrorist Dilawar Singh, who blew himself up and killed former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, they said.

Targeting rogue ex-servicemen was beneficial for the pro-Khalistan preacher as they already had arms licences which could help his organisation to evade the law, the officials said.

Two such ex-servicemen, identified as Varinder Singh of the 19 Sikhs and Talwinder Singh of the 3rd Armoured Punjab, were instrumental in providing arms training to the youngsters, who were addicted to drugs, they said.

The licences were cancelled by the administration subsequently and Varinder Singh was arrested while Taliwinder Singh is still at large, the officials said.

Security agencies had raised a red flag after intelligence inputs suggested that Amritpal Singh was using drug de-addiction centres and a gurudwara for stocking weapons besides preparing youngsters to carry out suicide attacks, the officials said.

A thick dossier prepared with inputs from various security agencies claimed that Amritpal Singh was mainly engaged in preparing the youngsters to become ‘Khadkoos’ (terrorists).

During investigation arms and ammunition meant for the so-called Anandpur Khalsa Fauj (AKF), a creation of Amritpal Singh, were seized. Uniforms and jackets were also confiscated by police, the officials said.

They added that the weapons and ammunition seized from the radical Sikh preacher’s car also bore ‘AKF’ markings on it.

The officials said weapons were being stored in several of de-addiction centres run by ‘Waris Punjab De’ as well as at the Jallupur Khera Gurdwara in Amritsar.

Amritpal Singh had attended a ‘Shaheedi Samagam’ of killed terrorists where he termed them martyrs of the Panth, and promoted gun culture and glorified use of weapons.

The preacher is on the run after the Punjab Police arrested several of his supporters in a major crackdown that began weeks after the storming of the Ajnala police station near Amritsar to secure the release of an arrested associate. The episode had raised fears over the possibility of the return of Khalistani militancy to the state that borders Pakistan.

Lt Gen Pradeep Bali (retd)

Studying at a reputed missionary school in the 1970s, under the strict Jesuit eye of the Irish Brothers who firmly believed that “sparing the rod spoilt the child”, imbued one with well-enforced moral values. However, sometimes integrity was put to the test. One afternoon, as the gong struck 3 pm, announcing the end of classes for the day, I joined other boys hurrying out to play or head home. Coming down the stairs, my foot slipped on something hard and round. Looking down, I saw a thick ballpoint pen shining brightly. In one quick swoop, quite like the kites that would snatch food from our hands during lunch break, I picked up and pocketed the pen. It was a prized possession, as unlike the maximum two refill pens, it had six different coloured refills, each of which could be pressed down to write. I joyfully hurried home, savouring the stroke of luck which had bestowed me with this wonderful gift.

Upon reaching home, I closeted myself in the room I shared with my brother, three years my junior, after making sure I was alone. A detailed examination of the pen thrilled me no end as I scribbled away in six colours, flipping between the refills.

At dinner time, my father asked us about our day at school, as he often did. The sibling talked about a beautiful multi-coloured pen, which one of his friends had brought to class and which the latter had recently received as a gift from a foreign-returned uncle. He also mentioned that after school, as he walked home with the boy, his friend was distraught as he had lost or dropped the pen while leaving school and was unable to find it even after retracing his steps. I absorbed this piece of information in stoic silence with my gaze fixed on my dinner plate, lest I should reveal any emotion.

I did feel pangs of conscience that night but firmly decided to hang on to my chance possession, believing in the dictum ‘finders are keepers’. However, the early-morning brightness next day, as we walked to school, seemed to nudge me to be righteous in conduct. Before entering our respective classrooms, I told my brother that I would turn up during recess to meet the boy who had lost the pen. He looked at me quizzically but said nothing.

At the appointed hour, I met a scrawny 10-year-old and as I took out the pen from my pocket, his face lit up with joy and relief. After returning the pen, I felt a deep inner peace and a unique satisfaction. However, my sibling never tires of telling me that it was the fear of being found out by him that compelled my conscience to follow the right path!

Brig Jagbir Singh Grewal (Retd)

The history of warfare is replete with ghastly and bizarre events. In one such incident, Pakistani soldiers set afire dried-up grass adjoining the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu & Kashmir on a warm, dry evening in May 1984.

I was then commanding a well-fortified outpost of 18 Punjab; almost simultaneously, Pakistani machine guns had opened fire. Their bullets flew, interspersed with tracer rounds, and hit our post endlessly. This sheer display of belligerence achieved its motive because it hindered our movement and deterred us from extinguishing or containing the fire.

The fire fanned out rapidly. A couple of landmines in the forward slope exploded, thus adding to the inferno. Soon, the sky became aglow with a fiery reddish tinge. Birds of all hues that had sung cheery melodious songs during the day disappeared swiftly. Even the sun turned into an orb of fluorescent burgundy-red and deserted us as it sank behind the mountains. A gust of wavering smoke trailed. Sparks flew high and sideways in all directions. The grass and scrub burnt noisily as a white moon gradually emerged.

It was celebration time for our adversaries across the LoC as they chided us, hoarsely shouting in chaste Punjabi, ‘Bharavo, raatan garam ne’ (Brothers, the nights are warm). Trying to soothe my frayed nerves, I promptly mulled over our course of action. While being reminded of the invaluable lesson that the Army had taught us as cadets — ‘All men are afraid in war, but the brave are those who can control their fear’ — it dawned on me that there was a saving grace. We had periodically created no-fire lanes around the precincts of our post by removing the grass and shrubs and, thus, the possibility of the raging fire touching our fortifications was minimal.

Not wishing to ignore the grave provocation, we retaliated expeditiously. Firing recklessly in a trigger-happy manner achieves no purpose; so, we fired selectively to nullify the adversary’s advantage. As we endeavoured to attain ascendancy, the wind changed its direction towards some Pakistani posts, and the flames swept their posts too, setting them ablaze. Our post was now merely smouldering with the burnt-out ashes. Apparently, we had emerged victorious in our trial by fire. Providence had upheld morality and righteousness — values that are so well nurtured by the Indian Army.

Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (Retd)

The world may be a small place now but home is still home. Ask a fauji and you will get that wry smile associated with the longing for your kith and kin. And even if your near ones are with you, but you are abroad, home is still where India is.

The day was July 20, 2006, and we were halfway through our year-long deployment to Sudan as part of the Indian Air Force’s helicopter contingent in the UN mission there. We had carried hundreds of CDs of Hindi movies, and as part of mass entertainment a film would be screened every Thursday evening in our makeshift open-air theatre that we called ‘Nile Cineplex’. There was one rule on the choice of film — to keep the morale up in that distant wilderness, it compulsorily had to be a feel-good movie, as the last thing we wanted was to go to sleep in our tents in a sombre mood. That July evening, it was the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Swades.

We, 196 Indians, in that pitch-black night — a shade of black that only those who have been to the interiors of Africa would know — saw the hero pining for his two loves — a young damsel in the interiors of India where electricity was erratic, and for his motherland whose poverty he had seen in the thatched hut of a poor villager who did not feed his children that night but gave food to him, the hero, who had come to collect rent for his land. It sure was emotional for us who were thousands of kilometres away from our loved ones, and from our homeland, whose duty we had come to perform. I, at least, went back to my tent with a lump in my throat. Was it a wrong choice of film, considering our unwritten rule?

It sure was not. I reminisced about my year-long courses in France and the US two decades earlier where I was alone in the initial few months. And when my wife and our two beautiful daughters joined me, it was pure bliss which lasted for some time before all four of us started missing home — India! Was Sudan deployment different? Well, I had 195 fellow countrymen as my family there and we spoke the same language and got good desi food. But we missed home — our India, and our feelings were not too different that night from Shah Rukh Khan’s as he thought of his two loves while the song went —‘Yeh jo des hai tera, swades hai tera’; the love of India beckoned us as no other love can. Oh boy! Were we sick — happily homesick!

Address panel’s concerns about imports, project delays

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, in its report tabled in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, has flagged a slew of challenges being faced by India’s armed forces. The panel has expressed concern over ‘considerable delay’ in the supply of 40 Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. It has recommended that the government should consider buying state-of-the-art fifth-generation fighter aircraft ‘over the counter without losing time.’The Tejas LCA — an all-weather, multi-role fighter aircraft that can be deployed for offensive air support, close combat and ground attacks — is of crucial importance for the country’s military readiness. Two years ago, another parliamentary panel had highlighted that lack of coordination among stakeholders and a casual approach of the monitoring agencies towards enforcing timelines had led to delays in the implementation of the Tejas programme. It is inexcusable that issues pertaining to the premier fighter jet’s design, systems and weapons have still not been resolved.

Wedged between two hostile neighbours, India needs to maintain a high level of defence preparedness at all times. In a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan and China, the committee has suggested that the Army’s capital budget should be increased so as to enhance its capacity to ward off challenges from across the borders. Ample funds are one of the prerequisites to ensure that the projects related to defence modernisation and indigenisation are not held up. Optimum, time-bound utilisation of these funds also has to be prioritised.

Another area of concern is the hefty import bill. The parliamentary panel has asked the Ministry of Defence to come up with ways and means to not only reduce imports, but also give a push to indigenous products for exports. Incentivising indigenisation can help in decreasing the dependence of the armed forces on foreign sources. The key here is to deliver aircraft, weapons, equipment etc. within the deadline. Indian vendors should be preferred if they can do the needful. In 21st-century warfare, the focus is on remaining ahead of the game in terms of cutting-edge technology and ready-to-use weaponry. India must remember that laggards are bound to end up as losers in any armed conflict.