Current Events :
Kulwinder Singh’s parents Darshan Singh and Amarjit Kaur in a Rupnagar village on Thursday. Ht photoRupnagar : Life has been one long, lonely battle for parents of CRPF constable Kulwinder Singh, 26, of Rauli village near Nurpur Bedi in the district. Kulwinder was the only son of Darshan Singh and Amarjit Kaur and loneliness is what has come to define their lives since the attack. An occasional visit from relatives in the village brings them some respite from the grief.
The state government fulfilled some promises it made like providing them a monthly pension of ₹10,000 and naming the Government Middle School of the village after Kulwinder.Other promises remain unmet.
A still inconsolable Darshan says, “The government has not constructed a gate and a 18-foot wide road from our village to Mothapir in the memory of my son. We have also not been given free electricity as promised.” The proud father also resents being made to stand in queues in government offices. Deputy commissioner Sonali Giri said that demand for the construction of a gate and a 18-foot wide road in the memory of Kulwinder would be met soon. “Necessary approvals for this are in place,” she said, adding that a cheque of ₹2.5 lakh had been given to Darshan for the development of a playground in the memory of his son.
— Bahadurjeet Singh
TARN TARAN : Family members of head constable Sukhjinder Singh, 32, who was among the 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel killed in the terror attack in Pulwama district of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on February 14 last year, are awaiting compensation and loan waiver announced by the Punjab government.
Sukhjinder’s widow Sarabjit Kaur, 28, said has been offered a job of a peon by the Punjab government, but she is not willing to accept it.
Sukhjinder, who joined the CRPF in 2003, was due to retire in 2022 and had planned to settle in Canada with his wife and son.
The family will commemorate his first death anniversary at a gurdwara in his native Gandiwind village falling under Patti sub-division on Friday.
“The government has forgotten his sacrifice,” said Sukhjinder’s 60-year-old father Gurmej Singh. “The government promised ₹12 lakh compensation and a Punjab minister gave us a cheque for ₹5 lakh to us soon after my son’s death. But, we are still waiting for the remaining amount,” he added. “The government also promised to waive ₹2.5 lakh farm loan, but nothing has been done so far,” said Sukhjinder’s elder brother Gurjant Singh.
—Anil Sharma
MOGA : Gurparkash, the six-year-old son of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) head constable Jaimal Singh, who was killed in the Pulwama terror attack last year, is waiting for his father to return.
Jaimal, 44, who belonged to Ghalauti village in Moga district, joined the CRPF in 1993 and visited the family on January 28, 2019, last time. He was driving the CRPF bus that was blown up by terrorists.
His wife Sukhjit Kaur said they were blessed with a son 16 years after their marriage. “As Jaimal couldn’t study in a good school, he wanted his son to get the best of education,” she said. Gurprakash wants to fulfil his father’s dream and become an officer.
“He is studying in Class 1 at a private school in Panchkula and the principal has promised to provide free education to him till Class 12. He is dreaming of donning stars on his shoulders,” said Sukhjit. Recalling her last conversation with Jaimal, Sukhjit said: “He told me that he was filling in for another driver who was on leave for his son’s wedding. He said he will call back. That call never came,” the slain trooper’s wife said.
The government promised monetary aid of ₹12 lakh to the family, but has only given ₹7 lakh to date.
—Parteek Singh Mahal
Kovind made the remarks after he presented the prestigious President’s Colour to INS Shivaji, Indian Navy’s premier technical training institute, in a ceremonial parade held at Lonavala near Pune on Thursday.
President Ram Nath Kovind receives a guard of honour at INS Shivaji in Lonavala on Thursday; (below) he presents the prestigious President’s Colour to INS Shivaji. (Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
The present geopolitical situation in the world, and in the Indo-Pacific in particular, demands greater vigilance and the Indian Navy has adopted mission-based deployments in the Indian Ocean region, President Ram Nath Kovind said at the INS Shivaji at Lonavala on Thursday.
Kovind made the remarks after he presented the prestigious President’s Colour to INS Shivaji, Indian Navy’s premier technical training institute, in a ceremonial parade held at Lonavala near Pune on Thursday.
Presentation of Colour or Standards is said to be an acknowledgement of the meritorious service rendered by the selected units over the years and is done at the hands of Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. While the practice of carrying the Colour, which is a flag, into battle has been left behind, the tradition of receiving, holding and parading the Colour continues even today in the Indian armed forces.
In his address to sailors, Navy officers and citizens, Kovind said, “Today, the geopolitical situation in the world and in the Indo-Pacific in particular demands greater vigilance. I am aware that the Navy has adopted mission-based deployments in the Indian Ocean region. High-quality training of marine engineers is crucial for sustained deployments and presence in our areas of interest. The future will also see great diversity in the propulsion systems, ranging from conventional to nuclear and electric and hybrid propulsion. Concepts of maintenance will also undergo a paradigm shift with increased requirements on operational availability of platforms. INS Shivaji will need to impart the requisite skills to all trainees to prepare them to meet future challenges.”
INS (Indian Naval Ship) Shivaji was commissioned as HMIS (His Majesty’s Indian Ship) Shivaji in 1945. The establishment has rendered 75 years of service to the nation by imparting training in engineering discipline to personnel of Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard, other sister services and friendly foreign countries. INS Shivaji
has, till now, trained more than 2 lakh officers and sailors, both Indian and foreign, since its inception. All courses conducted at INS Shivaji are recognised by the All India Council for Technical Education.
On Thursday, the President’s Colour was received by the officer designated as Nishan Adhikari on behalf of INS Shivaji during a ceremonial parade comprising 130 officers and 630 sailors of the Indian Navy, and including a Guard of Honour. Commander Nilesh Koshi George led the parade.
During his address, the President also said, “A nation’s maritime interests are usually also linked to its economy and the well-being of its people. I am told about 90 per cent of our trade, by volume, is handled by sea routes. This enhances the role of the Indian Navy, not just in national security but also in economic security, and thus in the wider process of nation building. The Navy is India’s chief instrument of its sea power. It is also the guardian of the nation’s maritime interests, both military and civilian.
The nation is proud of the Navy’s commitment in protecting our maritime frontiers, securing our trade routes, and also extending a helping hand in times of civil emergencies.”
Today, INS Shivaji is spread over 861 acres on the Lonavala tableland and houses a population of 6,000, comprising 2,500 persons in uniform, including trainees and the families. The institution consists of several training bodies
like Centre of Marine Engineering and Technology, Centre of Excellence in Marine Engineering, School of Basic Sciences and the Nuclear Biological Chemical Defence School.
Ravneet Singh
Tribune News Service
Patiala, February 12
The stage is set. Qila Mubarak, which is undergoing renovation, is all set to host events, part of the heritage festival, which will begin on February 22. Preparations for events are going on along with renovation of the darbar hall, front façade, the Ran Baas area and Androon Mehal. The restoration work will finish by June this year.
Qila Mubarak is an old fort first built as a ‘kachigarhi’ (mud fort) by Baba Ala Singh, known to be the founder of Patiala in 1763. Later, the fort was reconstructed with bricks.
The fort will host musical evenings and performances of noted artistes, including Kuchipudi dancer and Padma Bhushan awardee Raja Radha Reddy, Padma Bhushan Ustad Zakir Hussain and sitar player Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan among others.
Noted artistes, including Ustad Shujat Khan, Pt Ulhas Kashalkar and others have performed at
Qila Mubarak during previous festivals.
Darbar hall, front façade, the Ran Baas area and Androon Mahal of the iconic Qila Mubarak are being renovated as part of different projects initiated by the Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, Punjab.
The state government is spending Rs 10.34 crore on the renovation and restoration of the Ran Baas area, which could be used for running a hotel.
Along with the Ran Baas (guest house), darbar hall, museum and art gallery are also undergoing renovation and at present are closed for the public. The district administration is restoring walls from which paint has come off.
The Deputy Commissioner, Patiala, Kumar Amit, said, “As was done for the previous events, we are managing transportation facilities, the venue and the stage. We will be reviewing all the preparations before the start of the event.”
Efforts on to restore monument
Earlier, 300-year-old Qila Mubarak was in bad shape. Efforts were made by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), Patiala, for the preservation of the historic fort. Amrik Singh Chinna, then convener of the trust, led efforts for the restoration of the ‘qila’, Sheesh Mahal and Moti Bagh Palace. The trust also filed petition in a court against the state government’s decision to demolish building ‘declared unsafe’. Later, the government was directed to restore the heritage building.
Members of 25 European Union Parliamentarian delegation pose for a group photograph, in Srinagar on February 12, 2020. — PTI
Srinagar, February 13
Army officials on Thursday briefed the delegation of foreign envoys visiting Jammu and Kashmir on the security situation here.
The 25-member delegation arrived here on Wednesday on a two-day visit as part of a union government-facilitated trip to help the envoys have a first-hand assessment of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, a region which faced months of harsh restrictions after its special status was stripped of in August.
The envoys were briefed about the security situation at Badami Bagh Cantonment here, officials said.
The delegation later flew to Jammu for further engagements, they said.
The group comprises envoys from Afghanistan, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, the European Union, France, Germany, Republic of Guinea, Hungary, Italy and Kenya.
Envoys from Kyrgyztan, Mexico, Namibia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Rwanda, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Uganda and Uzbekistan are also part of it.
This is the second batch of foreign envoys visiting the union territory in the last one month.
The government had taken a group of 15 envoys to Jammu and Kashmir last month with an aim to make them see the efforts to bring back normalcy in the Kashmir Valley. A number of opposition parties called it a “guided tour”. — PTI
Senior officials of NIA inspect the blast site in Lethpora area of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district. Tribune photo
Srinagar, February 13
A memorial to the 40 CRPF personnel killed in the Pulwama terror attack in February last year will be inaugurated at the Lethpora camp on Friday, a top official said.
“It is a way to pay homage to the brave jawans who lost their lives in the attack,” Additional Director General of CRPF Zulfiquar Hasan said on Thursday here after a visit to the site where the memorial has been erected.
The names of all the 40 personnel along with their pictures will be part of the memorial along with the motto of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) — ‘Seva and Nishtha’ (Service and Loyalty).
“It definitely was an unfortunate incident and we have learnt our lessons now. We were always extra alert during our movement but now an extra layer of alertness has been added to it,” Hasan told PTI here.
The supreme sacrifice of the 40 jawans has furthered increased “our resolve to eliminate enemies of the country”.
“We fight with extra vigour during an encounter with terrorists and that is why we were able to eliminate the entire Jaish-e-Mohammed commanders immediately after the attack on our jawans,” he said.
While he refused to spell out the precaution that is taken during troop movements in the aftermath of the February 14 attack, officials in the security establishment said the movement of troops is now done in coordination with other security forces and the Army.
The Ministry of Home Affairs had also allowed the CRPF to carry its troops by air to avoid the possibility of any such attack.
The Jammu and Kashmir Government had imposed a ban on plying of private vehicles on two days in a week to facilitate movement of troops. The order was later rescinded after the situation became normal.
The process of bullet-proofing of vehicles carrying the troops was expedited and more and more bunker-type vehicles were seen on roads carrying the jawans.
The memorial has been set up inside a CRPF camp adjacent to the place where Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist Adeel Ahmed Dar, driving an explosive-laden car, blew himself next to a convoy of security forces killing the 40 personnel.
Almost all the conspirators behind the dastardly attack have since been killed with the last one being Qari Yasir, the self-styled chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group, who was killed last month. — PTI
rmy chopper makes emergency landing in Punjab’s Ropar district
Arun Sharma
Tribune News Service
Ropar, February 13
An Army Chetak helicopter on Thursday made an emergency landing at a village in Punjab’s Ropar district due to a technical snag, a senior police official said here.
The helicopter landed on a field in Ban Majra village. All three crew members were safe.
Army sources said that the helicopter, belonging to Army Aviation Corps, was on a routine sortie when the pilot suspected a possible leak in the fuel supply and carried out a controlled landing in the fields after clearance from air traffic control.
Residents said the chopper landed around 10 am, escaping power supply lines passing through the fields.
Initially villagers presumed that it was a helicopter hired by someone for a marriage ceremony at a nearby banquet hall.
Later, another helicopter carrying a team of technical experts reached the spot and after three hours both the copters took off at 1.30 pm.
Ropar SSP Swapan Sharma said district police was informed about the incident around 11.30 am following which the area was cordoned off by local police.
New Delhi, February 12
Clearing all doubts and confusion over the responsibilities of the Defence Secretary and the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Bipin Rawat said both had their own charter of works. “There must be some civilian control over the military. I would dare to say civilian control over the military must remain and must be paramount in a democratic country like ours,” he said.
Speaking at the Times Now Summit 2020 in Delhi, General Rawat said the CDS was looking at jointness, integration and ensuring that the priorities for procurements were laid out correctly so that all the three services — Army, Air Force and Navy — move ahead without one service trying to beat the other in procurement system.
“The CDS has to ensure that the budget is better managed and we do not rush to ensure that the budget is utilised,” he said. He also said that the Armed forces are at the cusp of transformation noting that proxy war and cross-border terrorism remained the key security challenges facing India.
Gen Rawat also rejected criticism that the Armed forces were suppressing the rights of the people in Jammu and Kashmir and said required steps were being taken keeping in view ground realities and the threats of terrorism.
Asked about his recent controversial comments that India has deradicalisation camps, he said what he meant was classification of people based on their views and the impact of relentless efforts to deradicalise young people. “When I said camps, I meant groups of people. The classification of people based on their views and the impact of relentless efforts to deradicalise young people. The word camp got misunderstood,” he said. He also said India was not competing with China which aspired to be a global power. — IANS/PTI
HT Correspondent
letterschd@hindustantimes.com
CHANDIGARH : Two Indian soldiers, who went missing in the Mushkoh Valley during the Kargil conflict in September 1999, were captured by Pakistani forces and then tortured to turn them into ‘assets’ to spy on their own country.
The claim has been made in a book titled “Missing in Action: The Prisoners who Never Came Back’’ that narrates the physical and mental torment the two men of the 108 Engineer Regiment — Bathinda native Jagseer Singh and Meerut’s Arif Mohammad Khan—underwent before being given training on espionage and forced to convert to Islam by Pakistan.
Authored by senior journalist Chander Suta Dogra, the book tells how the two were declared deserters by the army and their cases were never taken up properly by the Indian government, with their families leaving all hopes of the return of the missing men.
In Pakistan, the book claims, the two were first taken to the army unit deployed close to the LoC and subjected to third-degree torture before being sent to Chaklala and Rawalpindi. They were put through four stages of indoctrination followed by Mutt and Jeff interrogation techniques, it is claimed.
Then they were given the task of opening civil canteens in the Suratgarh, Lalgarh Jattan, Ganganagar and Bathinda cantonments and to collect intelligence which was to be passed on to Pakistani agents in New Delhi. Funds were to come from Pakistan to their families.
Pakistan kept on denying having any Indian soldiers in its custody.
Meanwhile, Arif’s wife Gudiya got remarried and was pregnant with her second husband’s child till the issue of two missing soldiers cropped up in the media in 2003 when he managed to write a letter to his family that he was in Pakistan Army’s custody.
India then strongly took up the issue with Pakistan, which in 2004 agreed to release the two in exchange of release of a Pakistani soldier captured near the Line of Control (LoC) in 2002 and two civilians.
The two soldiers landed in India via the Wagah border in 2004 and the army intelligence kept them at the military hospital in Amritsar for debriefing.
The book claims the army’s intensive debriefing was intended to find out if theirs was an intentionally executed desertion or an inadvertent straying across the LoC. But intelligence sleuths found Jagseer’s behavior suspicious as he wore a white skull cap and offered namaz five times a day.
The soldiers seemed sullen and refused to talk for the first two days, the author claims quoting some officials.
But then the intelligence team befriended them and after a month they narrated the psychological exploitation, indoctrination and inhuman treatment they faced over five years meted by Pakistan to them turn into spies.
Col Bipin Pathak (retd), who had debriefed the two, is quoted in the book saying, “The two harboured a deep anger towards the army and India for letting them down as deserters. They had been told that if they went back to their units, they will be shot dead or thrown into jail.”
Col Pathak is quoted as saying the army sent them to their units from where they retired. Jagseer later joined the Punjab Police and also worked in the security of now state finance minister Manpreet Badal.
With a foreword by General VP Malik (retd), former chief of army staff, the book also carries stories of Major AK Suri, who came alive five years after he was declared dead and how Indian intelligence deduced that Flight Lieutenant TS Dandoss was not killed in an air crash but was secretly detained by Pakistan.
The disciplinary proceedings against the two officers began after the wife of the Major complained to the Chief of Army Staff and the Adjutant General about her husband’s ‘affair’ with the woman officer
An Army court martial has sentenced a woman Major of the Military Intelligence to be dismissed from service on charges of ‘unbecoming conduct’. (Representational Image)
An Army court martial has sentenced a woman Major of the Military Intelligence to be dismissed from service on charges of ‘unbecoming conduct’ for having an affair with a married Major.
The male officer, who belongs to Infantry, has also been been punished by another court martial for ‘unbecoming conduct’ and has been sentenced to be cashiered (stripped of rank and benefits) and given three months rigorous imprisonment.
The two officers faced charges under Section 45 of the Army Act which deals with unbecoming conduct by an officer. While the woman Major’s Summary General Courts Martial (SGCM) concluded in Jammu Sunday, the male officer’s trial gave its verdict in first week of January.
The disciplinary proceedings against the two officers began after the wife of the Major complained to the Chief of Army Staff and the Adjutant General about her husband’s ‘affair’ with the woman officer. The complainant attached several photographs and video clips as evidence of the same.
The lady officer was posted with the Northern Command Counter Intelligence Unit when she was ordered to face the trial. The male Major was serving with a Special Forces unit when the two came to know each other but he was later reverted back to his parent infantry battalion.
While the Supreme Court has ruled that adultery is not a crime, the Army takes a dim view of even consensual relationships between its male and female officers with the view that it affects the fabric of interpersonal relationship and is detrimental to maintaining discipline.
The woman Major had been in news earlier for a botched intelligence operation in Assam in December 2011. It was in the backdrop of this operation, among other issues, that the then Chief of Army Staff, Gen V K Singh, had held Lt Gen Dalbir Singh, then GOC 3 Corps and later Army Chief, responsible for improper handling of 3 Corps Intelligence and Surveillance Unit and had issued a show cause notice for censure just days before proceeding on retirement.
The show cause notice delayed the elevation of Lt Gen Dalbir Singh has General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command, and it was only after this notice had been set aside post-retirement of Gen VK Singh, that he was able to assume office.
In 2013, the then General Officer Commanding 3 Corps, Lt Gen S L Narsimhan, had ordered that the woman officer, who was then a Major, and who led the operation in the intervening night of December 20-21, 2011, be tried summarily.
