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Credit: PTI photo
A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly challenged the former Congress-led UPA over its handling of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, an archival interview from retired air force officer have resurfaced, triggering discussions on the preparedness of India’s armed forces to strike terrorist bases across the border, and why they did not.
Speaking while inaugurating the Navi Mumbai International Airport, PM Modi said the Congress must "tell the people" who prevented the Army from attacking Pakistan after the 26/11 carnage, and suggested that foreign pressure had played a role in stopping a military response.
An old interview clip circulating on social media, conducted by journalist Gaurav Sawant with former Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major (retd.), adds fresh fuel to the debate. In that interview, Major recalled that the three service chiefs were summoned to the Prime Minister's Office after the Mumbai attacks and that the Indian Air Force had a pre-prepared operational plan ready for the government to consider. “We then left it to them to decide whether we can go ahead with the plan or not,” Major had said in the interview from three years ago.
Pressed about possible targets and the kind of action the Air Force could have taken, the former IAF chief was pointed in his assessment: “Our aim was to launch air strikes across PoK or wherever the intelligence gave us information regarding terrorist camps. But there was no response. They only told us that they will let us know.” He added that, personally, after the slaughter of civilians in Mumbai, he was “looking forward to strike Pakistan to avenge the dastardly act,” but acknowledged that the decision to use force was the government’s prerogative.
The resurfacing of Major’s interview has prompted former pilots and defence commentators to reiterate claims that operational plans were readied in 2008. One former fighter pilot, Mohonto Panging Pao, who says he commanded a Su-30MKI squadron then, asserted on social platforms that squadrons had been deployed in the Punjab sector, missiles were positioned, and specific training camps in Muzaffarabad and Balakot had been identified as potential targets — but that the strike was shelved when the UPA government did not give the go-ahead. “We should have hit them in 2008! Soft leadership!” he wrote.