MAJOR GOGOI BREAKS SILENCE ON HUMAN SHIELD INCIDENT
SUKHOICRASH WOULDHAVE BEENSPOTTED
Srinagar, May 23: At the centre of a controversy, Major Leetul Gogoi on Tuesday appeared before the media to say that his action of tying a man to a jeep as a shield against stone-pelting last month was intended to save the lives of many people.
Breaking his silence, he said about 1,200 stone-pelters had surrounded a small group of security personnel at a polling booth in Utligam village of Budgam district on April 9 and if he had ordered firing, there could have been at least 12 casualties.
Gogoi, who was commended by the Army chief on Monday, said he and five other army personnel had gone to that polling booth after a “distress call” about a small group of ITBP personnel and few members of the polling staff being surrounded by a big crowd of about 1,200 stone-pelters.
He said the idea of tying the man, who was identified as Farooq Ahmad Dar, to the jeep had struck him as a means to evacuate the polling staff and the security personnel, besides avoiding any casualties. He said after Dar was tied to the jeep, the stone-pelting stopped for some time, providing a window to them to leave that area safely.
“This thing I have done only to save the local people. Had I fired, there would have been more than 12 casualties... With this idea, I have saved many peoples’ lives,” Gogoi said. A two-seater Sukhoi-30 MKI aircraft of the Indian Air Force has been reported missing on Tuesday, about half-an-hour after taking off from the Salonibari airbase in Assam's Tezpur. The flight plan of the aircraft with two pilots is learnt to have been towards Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. "If at all it had suffered a crash in the plain areas of Assam, it would have been very easily detected," sources added.
China claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own which it calls South Tibet. The Buddhist Tawang monastery occupies centrality in the Chinese claim over the hilly northeastern state. The Sukhoi SU-30 is a frontline aircraft of the IAF. Indian has about 230 operational Su-30 fighters, although just half of that strength is available for operational flights due to numerous issues at any given point of time.
The Su-30 flies at about 2,100 kmph, has a range of 3,000 km and a capability to be airborne for more than 3.5 hours. A multirole fighter of Russian origin, the plane is capable of carrying a variety of weapons, including medium-range air-to-air missiles. It can attain a maximum speed of over 2,000 km per hour.
Till date, seven Sukhoi 30 MKIs have crashed resulting in a loss of about `2,350 crore. The last crash was on March 15 in Rajasthan.