Three former army chiefs on Wednesday opined against the idea of releasing the video footage of the surgical strike carried out by the Indian Army on terror camps across the LoC last week.
A section of the political establishment has asked the government to make the footage of the midnight move public in order to put all the doubts on the authenticity of the operation at rest.
Gen V P Malik, Gen J J Singh and Gen Deepak Kapoor strongly opposed the idea. Indian Army, they said, should not be doubted. “There’s electronic evidence, but nobody has the right to ask us to share it with them. We don’t have to share it with anyone. I don’t believe anybody has the right to question the fact that we have conducted the operations and that we should show them evidence,” said Singh, who was also the governor of Arunachal Pradesh.
“The video should not be released just because some stupid people have sought so. It is utter nonsense that people are asking the army to prove the operation. Only the army should take a call on whether to release the video or not and when,” said Malik, who led the army during the Kargil war.
“Indian Army is totally apolitical, secular and pro-national. So, when they have issued a statement, I don’t think anyone should have any doubts about the info that the DGMO has given out,” said Kapoor.
The former chiefs aired their views on a day when Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir claimed the army had submitted the footage to the government. “There was a time when written documents were submitted. Now the times have changed. Now clips are given and the clips have been given,” Ahir told reporters.
‘Repression of civilians unprecedented’
Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah on Wednesday said the crackdown and “unabated repression” of civilians in Kashmir was unprecedented and seemed like an “institutional effort to punish” people for the current unrest, DHNS reports from Srinagar.
“Nocturnal raids, imposing PSAs indiscriminately, ransacking people’s homes and burning their crops and animal fodder cannot be an acceptable modus operandi of the state’s security forces in dealing with a political situation,” Omar said in a statement.