Ravinder Sood

Palampur, January 9

Rulia Ram Walia, father of Maj Sudheer Walia, who had attained martyrdom while fighting militants in Jammu and Kashmir, is moving from pillar to post for the past 20 years for the installation of a statue of his son in Palampur or his native village but the bureaucracy of the state is unmoved.

Rulia Ram has met the Chief Minister, ministers, MLAs, Deputy Commissioners and other senior dignitaries of the government, but all in vain.

He also announced returning his son’s gallantry awards, including Ashok Chakra, but even after a year, no land has been earmarked for the statue.

The Tribune team called on Rulia Ram on Sunday at his native Banuri village, 6 km from here. In a choked voice, he said the state and Centre had no respect for martyrs. “Whenever any soldier attains martyrdom, the state government makes tall claims of providing all kinds of help. However, no one comes forward to fulfil those promises later. There are many other families which have been fighting for the completion of projects announced in the name of their kin who sacrificed their lives for the nation,” said a teary-eyed Rulia Ram.

He said both state and Central governments had failed to acknowledge the supreme sacrifice made by his son and had not installed his statue in the town or at their native village. Besides Ashok Chakra, Major Walia was decorated with Sena Medals for gallantry on two occasions for combating militancy in Jammu and Kashmir.

He also served as an ADC to former Army chief VK Malik for two years. In his book ‘Kargil : From Surprise To Victory’, General Malik has devoted a full chapter on Major Walia.

New Delhi, January 10

India has deployed its aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya in the Arabian Sea at a time China and Pakistan are holding a nine-day mega naval exercise in the region, a move seen as New Delhi sending a clear signal to its two neighbours.

Top officials of the Naval headquarters were on board the aircraft carrier when it was deployed in the strategic mission earlier this week, military sources told PTI.

Pakistan and China on Monday launched a major drill in the North Arabian Sea with an aim to increase inter-operability and strategic cooperation between their two navies.

The exercise ‘Sea Guardians’ is taking place in the midst of heightened tension between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir issue. Key platforms of both China and Pakistan, including submarines, destroyers and frigates, are part of the exercise.

Aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, with MiG29K fighters on board, has been sent with a strategic objective, the sources said without elaborating.

A Navy spokesperson said Deputy Chief of Naval Staff M S Pawar reviewed INS Vikramaditya’s operations in the Arabian Sea.

The deputy chief was extremely pleased to witness the “intense air operations”  with high levels of motivation and will to win that were evident on-board the “Queen of the Battle”, the spokesperson said.

He expressed confidence that INS Vikramaditya will “live up to the name and remain victorious in battle – always”, the spokesperson added.

China has been expanding its presence in the North Arabian Sea and is developing Pakistan’s deep water Gwadar port in the region.

Gwadar is being connected through the over USD 60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to China’s Xinjiang province, providing a key land route to China to access the warm waters of Arabian Sea.

The Arabian Sea provides entry to the Indian Ocean where China has built a logistics base at Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.

In September, the Indian Navy drove out a Chinese PLA ship from India’s Exclusive Economic Zone and had warned that such activities will be dealt with sternly.

The INS Vikramaditya, commissioned into the Indian Navy in November 2013, is considered one of the top rated aircraft carriers globally.

The Russian-origin ship is often called a floating airfield. The 44,500 tonne is about 284-m-long and its height is around 60 m, which is like a 20 storeyed building from keel to the highest point.

The ship has a total of 22 decks and it has the ability to carry over 30 aircraft comprising an assortment of MiG 29K/Sea Harrier, Kamov 31, Kamov 28, Sea King, ALH-Dhruv and Chetak helicopters. PTI

Chandigarh, January 10

An Army Naik and two others have been arrested for allegedly smuggling drugs and weapons from across the Indo-Pak boarder using GPS-fitted drones in collusion with their Pakistani accomplices, the Punjab Police said on Friday.

Punjab Police chief Dinakar Gupta said they seized two Chinese-made drones, 12 drone batteries, some custom-made drone containers, an INSAS rifle magazine and two walkie-talkie sets, besides Rs 6.22 lakh in cash from them.

The cash is suspected to be the sale proceed of the smuggled drugs, he said, adding that no drug, however, has been recovered from them as yet.

He said three persons including an Army naik, Rahul Chauhan, were arrested, said Director-General of Police Dinkar Gupta.

“Now, we have come across a module in which three people were arrested and where they were launching drones from India to across the border (Pakistan) and they were to bring back drugs payloads,” Gupta said, adding they suspected both drugs and small weapons like pistols came from the other side of the border.

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Detailing about the two drones seized from smugglers, Gupta said the first drone, a Quadcopter was recovered from an abandoned government dispensary in Modhe village in Amritsar (Rural).

The second one, a Hexacopter, was recovered from the house of a friend of arrested Army Naik Rahul Chauhan in Karnal in Haryana on his disclosures, DGP Gupta said.

The seized drones were GPS-fitted, he said, adding that it was discovered that such drones were being used to drop weapons, hand grenades, satellite phones and fake currency notes in India.

Detailing Army Naik Rahul Chauhan’s role in the novel modus operandi of smuggling drugs and weapons using drones, the DGP said he was involved in not only procuring and supplying drones but also training the cross-border smugglers how to use them.

Police said Rahul, an Ambala Cantonment resident, did not only procure drones but even operated its to-and-fro sorties across the border for smuggling consignments of heroin and weapons from Pakistan.

The two other accused were identified as Dharminder Singh of Dhanoa Khurd village in Amritsar and Balkar Singh of Sara Amanat Khan in Amritsar.

While Dharminder was arrested from village Hardo Rattan, about 3 km from the Indo-Pak border, Balkar, who was lodged in Amritsar jail in a drug case, was into smuggling drugs and weapons through drones, along with his accomplices, said the police.

The police secured his custody on production warrant on Thursday for his custodial interrogation in the case.

The arrests and seizures were made nearly four months after the emergence of the novel modus operandi of smuggling weapons and drugs from Pakistan, after the discovery of two crash-landed drones in a border village in Amritsar district and other in a Karnal village in Haryana in September and August 2019, respectively.

One of the drones, recovered from a paddy field in Mohawa village of Amritsar district in September, was found to be a ‘hexacopter drone of Chinese make, powered by six electric motors with 25 kg of weight and payload capacity of 21 kg, enough to carry weapons and bulky consignments. PTI

New Delhi, January 10

The Centre on Friday announced that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act will come into force from January 10.

In a gazette notification, the Union Home Ministry said the Act, under which non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan will be given Indian citizenship, will come into force from January 10.

“In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (2) of the section 1 of the Citizenship  (Amendment) Act, 2019 (47 of 2019), the Central government hereby appoints the 10th day of January, 2020, as the  date on which the provisions of the said Act shall come into force,” the notification said.

The CAA was passed by Parliament on December 11.

According to the CAA, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014, facing religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship.

There have been widespread protests against the act in different parts of the country.

Those who are opposed to the legislation are saying that it is for the first time that India will grant citizenship on the basis of religion which violates the basic tenets of the country’s constitution.

However, the government and ruling BJP has been defending the act saying that the minority groups from the three countries have no other option but to come India when they face religious persecution there.

The Home Ministry, however, is yet to frame the rules for the Act. PTI

Vijay Mohan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 8

With information security becoming a cause for concern due to the proliferation of smart phones, the Army is developing a proactive security application for installation on mobiles that will be able to monitor and control voice and data communication as well as track the location and movement of the device.

At present there is no effective system of securing the use of smart phones other than rudimentary measures such as restricting their presence in sensitive military establishments or carrying out passive surveillance by monitoring agencies. Mobile phone communication not only remains highly susceptible to interception, but is also prone to installation of malwares and other snooping applications.

Under the plan, each mobile handset will be configured with the application through which voice and data exchange will be requested and linked to a central server over the Internet for providing a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) cover and initiate a secure communication.

A GPS-based virtual boundary or a ‘geo fence’ will also be identified for each device on a real-time location so that the movement of the device can be tracked and its entry or exit to and from specified zones is recorded. The project is expected to take 12-15 months for development and carrying out user trials. The Directorate General of Information Technology at Army Headquarters and the Army Software Development Centre are the agencies responsible for executing the project, which may also see the involvement of domain experts from the public or private sector.