Barbarism against Indian soldiers needs to be avenged: Rawat

JAIPUR: Army chief General Bipin Rawat said Saturday stern action is needed to avenge the barbarism by terrorists and the Pakistan Army against Indian soldiers without resorting to brutality. The comment comes after a BSF jawan was shot and his throat slit recently, followed by the abduction and killings of three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir.

“We need to take stern action to avenge the kind of barbarism that terrorists and the Pakistan Army have been carrying out against our soldiers. It is time to give it back to them in the same coin, but not by resorting to similar kind of barbarism...,” the Army chief said at a press conference here.

“...If you look at it, the casualty and damage suffered by the other side (Pakistan) is far more than what we have been suffering. We have done it a professional and a military-like manner,” the army chief insisted.

Asked to comment on Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s tweet expressing “disappointment” on India’s decision to cancel a meeting of foreign ministers, the Army chief said talks and terrorism cannot go hand in hand and Pakistan needed to curb the menace of terrorism.

He said the government was fully supporting the force which also had the liberty to carry out their actions. “And you can see its result in Kashmir and the northeast,” he said.

Rawat also claimed that the surgical strike in 2016, in the wake of Uri attack, was a first-ofits-kind operation.

The Army chief was in Jaipur to review the Haifa Day Mounted Parade at the 61 Cavalry ground here. Haifa Day is celebrated every year to commemorate the liberation of Israeli city Haifa from the occupation of the Turks by the British Indian Army soldiers, led by Major Dalpat Singh, on September 23, 1918.