He played a key role in operationalising the ‘Litening’ laser designation pod during the Kargil Operations in 1999

Ajay Banerjee Tribune News Service

Air Marshal Narmdeshwar Tiwari has taken charge as the new Vice Chief of the Indian Air Force, succeeding Air Marshal SP Dharkar, who superannuated on April 30. Prior to this appointment, Air Marshal Tiwari commanded the IAF’s South Western Air Command at Gandhinagar.

The new Vice Chief of the IAF carries an interesting war-time legacy. He played a key role in operationalising the ‘Litening’ laser designation pod during the Kargil Operations in 1999. The pod, sourced from Israel and installed on IAF jets, marked an invisible beam that served as the path for laser-guided bombs to follow upon launch. This technology significantly enhanced the IAF’s precision targeting capabilities against Pakistani troops occupying mountain heights during the conflict.

A seasoned pilot, Air Marshal Tiwari has flown the Mirage and Tejas fighter jets. He served as a test pilot for the Tejas and held the position of Chief Test Pilot at Aircraft and Systems Testing Establishment.

Air Marshal Tiwari completed his schooling at the Rashtriya Indian Military College (RIMC) in Dehradun before joining the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasala. He graduated from the NDA in June 1985 with the President’s Gold Medal and was commissioned as a Fighter Pilot in the IAF in June 1986. With over 3,600 hours of flying experience, he is a Qualified Flying Instructor and an Experimental Test Pilot. Additionally, he is a graduate of the Air Command and Staff College, USA.

Brigadier Inderjeet Singh Chugh on Friday strongly criticised Pakistan for its double standards on terrorism and pointed out how former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto in the past had admitted that Pakistan had trained and funded terrorists and threatened India with atomic bombs, but later said that the country suffered a lot of damage, likely due to pressure from other countries.

Chandigarh [India], May 2 (ANI): Brigadier Inderjeet Singh Chugh on Friday strongly criticised Pakistan for its double standards on terrorism and pointed out how former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto in the past had admitted that Pakistan had trained and funded terrorists and threatened India with atomic bombs, but later said that the country suffered a lot of damage, likely due to pressure from other countries.

Speaking with ANI, Chugh said, “Bilawal Bhutto, who has made many statements in the past and threatened us with atomic bombs, is going back on his statement, maybe because of the pressure. Now he says that we used to train and fund the terrorists, but we suffered a lot of damage to our country, and we have learned lessons from it, and now we have stopped all this. The information was given earlier in such a way that we used to train them under the pressure of the United States and the United Kingdom. So, with all these statements, he has gone back…”

Chugh said, “There is a lot of pressure on them right now… America must have asked them when we told them thirty years ago to send terrorists against India. So, there is a pressure war and pressure from the countries they had linked together. So he has withdrawn his statement.”

Notably, Bilawal Bhutto on Thursday acknowledged Pakistan’s history with terrorism, claiming the nation has suffered but has reformed.

In a Thursday conversation with Sky News’s Yalda Hakim, Bhutto said, “As far as what the defence minister said, I don’t think it is a secret that Pakistan has a past… As a result, we have suffered, Pakistan has suffered. We have gone through wave after wave of extremism. But because of what we suffered, we also learned our lessons. We have gone through internal reforms to address this problem…”

“As far as Pakistan’s history is concerned, it is history and it is not something that we are partaking in today. It is indeed an unfortunate part of our history,” Bhutto said.

Meanwhile, following the clearance of the Army and Air Force versions of the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) Dhruv for operations, Chugh told ANI, “This is the Dhruv Chopper, which our HAL manufactured. This is an advanced light helicopter for the Indian Army and AIR Force, which was used for many purposes, transportation, evacuation and some such helicopters had fighting capability as well. There was an accident on January 5, and 300 helicopters were grounded. So now, the good news is that HAL has checked all the helicopters and given clearance. So these helicopters will now be available to our defence force. It’s a very important one.”

Defence PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, in a statement on Thursday, said, “In furtherance of the clarification dated 11th April 2025, it is now intimated that the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) Dhruv Army and Air Force versions are cleared for operations based on the Defect Investigation (DI) Committee recommendations. A time-bound plan for the resumption of operations has been worked out with the users.”

The Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard versions of the choppers will continue to be on the ground as the investigations are still continuing.

The choppers were grounded after a crash involving an Indian Coast Guard chopper in Porbandar earlier this year. (ANI)

(The story has come from a syndicated feed and has not been edited by the Tribune Staff.)

It was on May 3, 1999, that Tashi Namgyal, a shepherd looking for a missing yak, saw Pakistan army personnel atop the Batalik mountain range in Ladakh on the Indian side of the LoC and informed the Indian Army

Ajay Banerjee Tribune News Service

Even as war clouds gather again, it’s the anniversary of a clash dating back 26 years between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

It was on May 3, 1999, that Tashi Namgyal, a shepherd looking for a missing yak, saw Pakistan army personnel atop the Batalik mountain range in Ladakh on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC). Namgyal – who died in December last year – informed the Indian Army and it kicked off ‘Operation Vijay’. The Kargil conflict lasted from May to July.

Air reconnaissance by Indian surveillance agencies in February that year – around the same time Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was making his famous bus trip to Lahore — had filmed the Pakistan army activity. The extent of the threat dawned on India only after May 3, 1999.

Pakistani troops had occupied several peaks along the 168-km frontage of the Mushkoh-Dras-Kargil-Batalik-Turtuk axis. The Indian Army and Indian Air Force lost 527 personnel. The sanctity of the LoC was restored with a mix of military might and diplomatic heft. The Union Cabinet chaired by PM Vajpayee forbade the Indian troops from crossing the LoC.

Between the 1971 Indo-Pak war and Kargil, an interim of 28 years, technology had progressed while geo-strategic alignments had been reworked after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991-92. India and Pakistan were facing sanctions from the US in the aftermath of their respective nuclear tests in May 1998. Terrorists like Osama bin Laden were still not on the hit list of the US. Satellite imagery was just making its debut in the Indian military lexicon.

Multi-pronged plan

During winter, 140 Indian posts at altitudes between 15,000 feet and 19,000 feet used to be vacated. Pakistan used this ‘winter’ window’ to launch ‘Operation Koh-e- Paima’ in October 1998 to occupy these posts.

Gen Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan army chief, planned to cut off the two road approaches to Siachen and slice away territory in Ladakh. Islamabad believed international intervention would be quick, asking the nuke-carrying nations to stop.

One road to Siachen passes through Srinagar-Dras-Kargil. The second is via Manali and traverses north of Khardung La and reaches Turtuk valley area, which abuts the south-western edge of the Siachen glacial belt. Pakistan planned to establish a base at Turtuk to threaten the road to the glacier’s base.

Lt Gen Shahid Aziz, who worked in Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI, authored a book ‘Putting our Children in Line of Fire’, in which he says: “Our clearly expressed intent was to cut the supply line to Siachen and force the Indians to pull out.”

How Pak plan failed

Militarily, the Pakistani plan was questionable. Col Ashfaq Hussain (retd), who was in the Pakistan army’s media arm, in his book ‘Witness to Blunder: Kargil Story Unfolds’, questions Gen Musharraf. “The plan was a success only till Pakistani forces came face to face with the enemy. Our troops crossed the LoC at a time when the enemy (India from his perspective) was not present.”

Pakistan’s perception that ‘a bold strike to capture areas in J&K may go unchallenged by New Delhi’ proved to be wrong.

India’s directive to the military was to ‘evict the pockets of intrusion and restore the sanctity of the LoC’. No time-frame was given. The military strategy was based on three objectives: contain intrusion and prevent further build-up; evict the intruders and restore the LoC; and finally, hold ground.

Diplomatically, India managed to separate the intrusion from what Pakistan calls the ‘Kashmir issue’. US President Bill Clinton and Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif met in Washington DC on July 4. The statement called upon Pakistan (and not India) to take steps to restore the LoC and without linking it with the Kashmir dispute.

Petitioners’ counsel contended that they were Indian citizens having valid passports and Aadhaar numbers

Staring at deportation to Pakistan, six members of a family from Jammu and Kashmir on Friday got a reprieve from the Supreme Court which asked the Centre not to take any coercive action against them.

A Bench led by Justice Surya Kant and Justice N Kotiswar Singh asked the authorities to verify the identity documents of the petitioners who allegedly overstayed their visa. It gave the petitioners liberty to move the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, if aggrieved by the document verification order.

Asking the authorities to take a decision at the earliest, the Bench said no coercive action shall be taken against the petitioners till such time. The order shall not be treated as a precedent, it clarified.

The six members of the family—two of whom worked in Bengaluru—were facing deportation to Pakistan following the Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 innocent tourists were killed.

Petitioner Ahmed Tarek Butt and his five family members contended they were detained and taken to the Wagah Border for deportation to Pakistan despite having valid Indian documents such as Indian passports and Aadhaar numbers.

Following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, the Centre, in a notification dated April 25, revoked the visa of Pakistani nationals, except for those provided in the order itself and gave a specific timeline for their deportation, the Bench noted.

The petitioners’ counsel contended that they were Indian citizens having valid passports and Aadhaar numbers. While the sons worked in Bangalore, parents and daughter lived in Srinagar. The family members in Srinagar were taken in a jeep to the Wagah Border and were likely to be thrown out of India, he submitted.

“How did the father come to India from Pakistan?” the Bench asked as it wondered if the petitioners made full disclosure on the issue in their petition.

The father came to India in 1987 after surrendering his passport at the border, the counsel said, even as one of the sons—appearing virtually—claimed his father came to India from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that the petitioners should first approach the authorities concerned for verification of their claims.

Following a decision taken by the Cabinet Committee on Security in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, the Government decided to suspend visa services to Pakistani nationals with immediate effect.

All existing valid visas issued by India to Pakistani nationals stand revoked with effect from 27 April 2025, it said, adding medical visas issued to Pakistani nationals will be valid only till 29 April 2025. All Pakistani nationals currently in India must leave India before the expiry of visas, as now amended, it said.

However, the order has been modified to allow Pakistanis to return via the Attari-Wagah Border until further orders as against its previous direction that said the border would be closed on April 30.

Vance’s remarks were made on the ‘Special Report with Bret Baier’ show

Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service

The US has potentially linked Pakistan to terrorism in India with Vice President JD Vance saying Washington hopes Pakistan would cooperate with India to hunt down and bring to justice terrorists “sometimes operating from its territory”

Vance’s remarks were made on the ‘Special Report with Bret Baier’ show on Thursday.

When asked to comment on the tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, Vance said Washington is in touch with both the countries.

“Our hope is that India responds to this terrorist attack in a way that does not lead to a broader regional conflict. And we hope that Pakistan to the extent that they are responsible cooperate with India to hunt down terrorists, sometimes operating in their territory. That is how we hope it unfolds. We are obviously in close contact with India and Pakistan,” Vance said a day after India conveyed to the US that it wanted the perpetrators, planners and backers brought to justice.

On Thursday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar made this clear to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a call.

Later in the day, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh named Pakistan in the telephonic talks with his US counterpart Pete Hegseth and said Pakistan is a rogue state fuelling global terrorism and the world could no longer turn a blind eye to it.

This is the line India took at the UN earlier this week where it recorded the recent confession by Pakistan defence minister that Pakistan had financed terror networks.

The US had earlier urged both India and Pakistan to de-escalate.

Government’s move follows recommendations from the Ministry of Home Affairs in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s YouTube channel was blocked in India on Friday amid ongoing tension between the two countries following the deadly terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam.

“The content is currently unavailable in this country because of an order from the government related to national security or public order. For more details about government removal requests, please visit the Google Transparency Report,” read a message on the blocked channel.

The government had earlier this week blocked 16 Pakistani YouTube channels for allegedly disseminating “false, provocative and communally sensitive content” about India and has also strongly objected to the BBC’s reportage on the Pahalgam attack.

The government’s move follows recommendations from the Ministry of Home Affairs in the wake of the April 22 terror attack in the upper reaches of the Kashmir resort town in which 26 people, mostly tourists, were killed.

Besides, the Ministry of External Affairs will be monitoring the reporting of the BBC, which termed terrorists as militants, officials had said.

The YouTube channels blocked are Dawn News, Irshad Bhatti, SAMAA TV, ARY NEWS, BOL NEWS, Raftar, The Pakistan Reference, Geo News, Samaa Sports, GNN, Uzair Cricket, Umar Cheema Exclusive, Asma Shirazi, Muneeb Farooq, SUNO News and Razi Naama

The closure of air space over a specified area allows a clearer radar picture as civilian flying is suspended and anything else has to be military plane, UAV, missile or a helicopter

In a panic reaction fearing an Indian air strike, Pakistan has closed its air space over major parts of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), including Gilgit-Baltistan.

Pakistan issued a notice to airmen (NOTAM) about the closure of civil flying routes in PoK. This includes the part of PoK located west of the Kathua-Jammu-Rajouri-Pooch axis in Jammu and Kashmir.

The air space is also closed over Gilgit-Baltistan that is north of Ladakh. India already has its air assets located in Ladakh and that could be one of the fears at the Pakistan Army headquarters at Rawalpindi.

The closure of air space over specified areas allows a clearer radar picture as civilian flying is suspended and anything else has to be military plane, UAV, missile or a helicopter. It allows ground-based controllers to take an immediate action if anything shows up on the radar screens.

The closure of air space is an extension of Pakistan having announced a similar air space closure west of Karachi where an exercise is on. This will include missiles firing from land towards the sea. During the 1971 war, India   had launched an attack from sea at Karachi harbour.

Separately India and Pakistan are now carrying out an intense tit-for-tat Naval exercises in the Arabian Sea – west of Gujarat.

Both countries have issued    public   notices called ‘Nav-area warning’ informing sea farers about the exercises and the need to stay away from these areas at sea.

Pakistan is conducting its exercises in its territorial waters and India is doing in its own. The notice of exercises at sea shows, the navies of two nuclear armed countries would be separated by just 150 km.

Army responds in a calibrated manner

Our Correspondent

The Army said on Friday that the Pakistan Army resorted to unprovoked firing in five areas in Jammu and Kashmir.

Officials said that during the night of May 1 and 2, the Pakistan Army resorted to unprovoked small-arms firing from posts across the Line of Control in Kupwara, Baramulla, Poonch, Naushera and Akhnoor areas.

“Indian troops responded in a calibrated and proportionate manner,” the Army said.

It marks the eighth day ight when the exchange of fire has taken place at Line of Control.

Submitted request, but wedding solemnised before approval

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is likely to initiate disciplinary proceedings against a constable of its 41st Battalion for marrying a Pakistani national without obtaining the mandatory departmental clearance. The act is viewed as a serious breach of protocol with potential national security implications.

According to official records, the constable had submitted a request to marry Minal Khan, a Pakistani citizen. However, the marriage was reportedly solemnised before the CRPF could issue a formal response or grant an NOC.

The matter has become more sensitive in the wake of the Pahalgam attack. As part of heightened security measures, India has suspended visa services for Pakistani nationals and directed all Pakistani citizens to exit before the expiry of their visas.

Sources indicate that the CRPF’s J&K Zone had recommended against granting the constable’s request, citing national security concerns. The matter was forwarded to the higher authorities for a policy-level decision.

An internal review has since flagged several procedural lapses, including the constable’s failure to inform the department that his spouse remained in India beyond the validity of her tourist visa. He claimed that a long-term visa application was filed, but didn’t formally notify the department of this development.

Following the government’s instructions to enforce the exit of Pakistani nationals, the constable’s spouse was transported to the Attari-Wagah border for deportation. However, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court granted a 10-day stay on her deportation on April 29.

Fazlur Rahman, a close aide of chief adviser Yunus, had said if ‘India attacks Pakistan, Bangladesh should occupy 7 Northeastern states’

Ubeer Naqushbandi Tribune News Service

Bangladesh has issued an official clarification following controversial remarks made by Major General (Retd) ALM Fazlur Rahman on social media, in which he suggested Bangladesh should consider occupying India’s northeastern states if New Delhi retaliates against Pakistan.

Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasised that Rahman’s comments were made in a personal capacity and in no way reflect the views or policies of the government.

“The comments do not reflect the position or policies of the government of Bangladesh, and as such, the government neither endorses nor supports such rhetoric in any form or manner,” the statement read.

It further reaffirmed Bangladesh’s diplomatic stance, stating, “Bangladesh remains firmly committed to the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, mutual respect, and the peaceful coexistence of all nations.”

Rahman—former head of the Bangladesh Rifles (now Border Guard Bangladesh) and current chairperson of the National Independent Commission— had suggested that his country should invade and occupy all seven northeastern states of India if New Delhi attacks Pakistan in retaliation for the recent terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which killed 26 people.Advertisement

Rahman, considered close to Bangladesh’s chief advisor Muhammad Yunus, also advocated for military cooperation with China in such a scenario.

“If India attacks Pakistan, Bangladesh will have to occupy seven states of northeast India. In this regard, I feel it is necessary to start discussions on joint military arrangement with China,” Rahman wrote in Bengali on Facebook.

Rahman’s remarks come at a time when India and Bangladesh are trying to improve strained bilateral relations. Tensions have heightened following former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s flight to India seeking asylum, along with India’s concerns over alleged targeted attacks on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh.