To Deal With Pakistan, India Has More Effective Options Than Surgical Strikes: Army Chief

To deal with Pakistan, India has far more impactful and effective options than surgical strikes, Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat said in an interview with the Hindustan Times on Tuesday.

“Pakistan thinks it is fighting an easy war that’s paying them dividends, but we have options (other than surgical strikes) that are far more impactful and effective,” he was quoted by the daily as saying.

Talking about the recent beheading and mutilation of two Indian soldiers, Rawat said, “Our army is not barbaric. I don’t want heads because we are a disciplined force,” he said, referring to the decapitation and mutilation of two Indian soldiers.

On the issue of dialogue, he said that a meaningful dialogue is only possible if there is peace in the Kashmir Valley. “I’ll hold talks with a person who assures me that my convoy will not be hit. The day that happens, I will personally hold a dialogue,” he told the daily at the army headquarters in Delhi.

Rawat also talked about the human shield controversy and defended the actions of Major Leetul Gogoi, who had tied an alleged stone pelter to an army jeep to deter a mob from harming a convoy of polling officers.

“The election commission staff called for help. What if they had been lynched?” he asked. “I am not on the ground. I don’t know what my boys are going through, but I have to be the motivator,” he said, while citing the lynching of a deputy superintendent of police outside the Jamia Masjid mosque in Srinagar.

He refuted reports of jostling and transgression by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Sikkim. “There was no incursion into our territory. I don’t know where the visuals are from, but they are not from Sikkim,” he said.

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