Gloves Are Off In J&K

In the five months that General Bipin Rawat has been army chief, he has taken a hard line on a worsening security situation in Jammu and Kashmir’s southern districts.

- Sandeep Unnithan

Particularly as troops face stone-throwers against whom they are ill-equipped to respond. The army does not use the controversial ‘pellet-guns’, as the riot control shotguns used by the paramilitary forces are colloquially called, but increasingly finds itself being confronted by hostile stone-throwing civilians against whom it has no counter. In February, the army chief had warned of ‘tough action’ after numerous incidents of stone-throwers distracting security forces and allowing trapped militants to flee. Now, his latest statements in a May 27 interview to the Press Trust of India have not only invited controversy but also signalled the army’s new hard line.

“Adversaries must be afraid of you and at the same time your people must be afraid of you. We are a friendly army, but when we are called to restore law and order, people have to be afraid of us,” he said.