The Army Needs A Change In Approach While Combating Terrorists In Kashmir

The Indian Army lost a Colonel, a Major, and two non-commissioned officers while trying to rescue civilians taken hostage by terrorists at north Kashmir’s Handwara late Saturday (2 May) evening.

According to preliminary reports, security forces received information about the presence of a few terrorists in the Rajwar forest adjoining Handwara town on Friday. Officers and men of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and the J&K Police’s Special Operations Group (SOG) cordoned off the forest and launched a search operation.

Some of the Pakistani terrorists hiding inside the forest managed to slip out and took shelter in a house at Handwara on Saturday morning. They reportedly took the inmates of the house hostage. The 21 RR commanding officer, Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, started negotiating with the terrorists holed up in the house to secure the release of the hostages.

While detailed reports are awaited, it is learnt that Col Sharma, along with Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh, along with SOG sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi, entered the house and were killed by the terrorists.

The civilians were safely extricated from the house and the terrorists also killed.

But these clinical details conceal a highly unfortunate aspect of the encounter: that the deaths of the army officers and JCOs were completely avoidable.

And that the deaths occurred primarily due to two reasons: the misplaced priority on completely ruling out all chances of ‘collateral damage’, and the otherwise honourable and valourous ethos of Indian Army officers leading from the front.

We discuss on Directline with senior journalist Jaideep Mazumdar.

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[vaishnav]

*De-radicalization camp* is a must in kashmir

[kaushikbhattacharjya]

Totally agree, such high rank officer's getting martyred too often. Strategy must change.

[binodmenahihu]

Indian gov't needs to start doing what Chinese gov't is doing with uighur...

[debasishray]

You don't know... It's demotivate our soldiers...

[RaviKumar-flgr]

Army knows what they r doing...pls dnt try to become smart ass by point at them ...if u have to report than talk about their youth n those terrorist are harming the peace there n how u agency r glorify them

[raghavram]

Why not govt provide best protective gears like bullet proofs, ROBOTS etc to the security forces deployed especially In disturbed areas of J & K???

[ashalivarma]

We should learn from Isreal. Yes the civilians were collaborators in this.

[sufalmanorath]

Yes true.
Make strategy and leave war to hunters.
They know how to hunt rats.

[rameshiyer]

I suspect this was a botched operation from India's side. This was a joint op between J&K police and Indian Army, and not an exclusive Army op, which may have created some issues in the way the Army went about this op. Also, there are moles of separatists n terrorists in J&K police as is known from a senior officer who was caught ferrying few terrorists in his vehicle few months ago, and is suspended n being investigated. So, I suspect leakage of critical op info from J&K police to the terrorists' side which resulted in this mess. Indian Army personnel are very well trained and can carry out such anti terrorist ops by themselves without involving J&K police in their ops. Also, SOP for such ops needs to be reviewed n revised, to give our Army more leeway to complete their mission. Jai Hind !

[ashalivarma]

Yes this must be done. We can use so much else.

[tahirmahmood]

13 army man killed including 5 top ranking officers by brave Kashmiri and after that they run successfully

[rishidelta]

Yes a drastic change in tactics are required. The Army should consider civilians bas collateral as they could also be a part of the whole set up. Since they themselves actvas human shields for the terrorists and also their stone pelting brigades who give cover to the terrorists seperately. And furthermore more no need to save these civilians as they will eventually throw stones and then pick up an ak 47 later on, ...

[ratnamurlidharan]

Let the army decide what to do seeing the situation on the ground, only their requirements of weapons should be met with and no political interference should be done. Intelligence gathering is poor when locals conive with the terrorist.

[hesins]

High time Appeasement happening during such operations..

[riseofasia]

Kashmiris should change their strategy too. Instead of following the Palestinian Liberation Movt and Uighurs, they should follow the Bangladesh Liberation movement and most of all the Afghan Taliban. Thanks

[utubetruthteller]

Bad performance by the army why not drones are went first and then soldiers are sent.