[Assigned to remote outposts, the soldiers of both countries serve for years in a state of unrelenting tension, near enough to the enemy to exchange shouted obscenities. Heavily armed teams, often a mixture of militants and uniformed troops, will cross the line to ambush an outnumbered post or patrol, with the goal of inflicting maximum casualties in a brief time. Beheadings are seen as a particularly humiliating act.]
By
Hari Kumar and Ellen Barry
 |
Relatives and friends carried the coffin of Subedar Paramjit Singh this
month in the
patrolling the de facto border between
Credit Prabhjot Gill/Associated Press
|
But
before they could open the coffin, Indian Army officials stopped them, said
Prabhjot Singh, the dead man’s brother-in-law.
“The
army people told us the head is missing,” Mr. Singh said. “But we were not
convinced because they were not allowing us to see the body. What is the
condition of the body? What is missing, and what is intact?”
Finally
the two sides compromised, limiting the viewing to a few moments by members of
the immediate family and then moving on to the cremation. “What could we do?”
Mr. Singh said.
Acts
of extreme brutality, including beheadings and mutilations, occur with some
regularity along the Line of Control, the 450-mile disputed military frontier
that divides Kashmir into Indian and Pakistani territory.
Assigned
to remote outposts, the soldiers of both countries serve for years in a state
of unrelenting tension, near enough to the enemy to exchange shouted
obscenities. Heavily armed teams, often a mixture of militants and uniformed
troops, will cross the line to ambush an outnumbered post or patrol, with the
goal of inflicting maximum casualties in a brief time. Beheadings are seen as a
particularly humiliating act.
The
gruesome killings often lead the other side to seek vengeance, adding to the
volatility of an already tense standoff between the two nuclear-armed nations. Since
the beheadings on May 1, that stretch of the Line of Control has been hit by
heavy shelling, and thousands of civilians have been evacuated from surrounding
villages.
Indian
newspapers have reported around two dozen beheadings or mutilations of soldiers
on the Pakistani and Indian sides since 1998, typically followed by denials of
involvement by the opposing force.
Lt.
Gen. H. S. Panag, a former chief of the Indian Army’s northern command, described
it as a “primordial conflict” in which it was difficult to know which acts were
carried out by uniformed forces and which by militants.
“The
unit feels bad, and there is a clamor for revenge,” General Panag said. “Laymen
expect us to adhere to the rules, but these things do happen. There is nothing
new about it. It is just human instinct.”
Military
veterans say such acts occur more often than the public knows, kept under wraps
lest they set off a spiral of escalation. But as time goes on, military experts
say, concealing these attacks is becoming harder and harder to do, with
potentially grave consequences.
“Within
the army, we used to keep quiet,” General Panag said. “Now the soldiers have
mobiles; the porter who works at the post has a mobile. Everyone is in the
glare of a camera. Families speak. I don’t think such a matter can be hidden
today.”
The
families of those who were beheaded receive intense and focused attention from
government officials, but relatives are still often frustrated with the
government’s response, leading them to speak out.
In
2013, Dharamwati, the widow of a beheaded Indian soldier, went on a hunger
strike, demanding that the government return his head, drawing intense
attention from reporters and opposition politicians. Army personnel prevented
her from viewing his body before it was cremated, something that angers her to this
day, she said in an interview.
In
1999, Pakistani officials handed over the body of Capt. Saurabh Kalia of the
Indian Army, who had been captured by the Pakistani side and held prisoner for 22
days. His eyes had been punctured, his teeth broken, and his lips and nose cut
off, said his father, N. K. Kalia, a retired government scientist. Over the
next decade, Mr. Kalia documented his efforts to persuade Indian officials to
bring the case to an international war crimes court.
After
numerous delays and evasions, Mr. Kalia in 2012 filed a lawsuit against India India
“I
was promised everything under the sun,” Mr. Kalia said, referring to what
Indian officials had told him. “But the picture became clear. They will summon
the Pakistani high commissioner and give him a protest note. What importance
will they give to that protest note? They have accepted it, they tear it, and
they throw it out.”
Last
year, The Hindu, a daily newspaper, printed internal government documents about
a 2011 Indian Army raid called Operation Ginger, which was prompted by a
Pakistani attack that had killed six Indian soldiers. Two of the dead were
beheaded. The response came a month later: an ambush that left at least eight
Pakistanis dead, three of them beheaded, according to documents cited by the
newspaper.
The
newspaper characterized the soldiers’ heads as “trophies.”
Beheading
carries extraordinary emotional power for troops and has for many centuries, said
Gen. Ved Prakash Malik, who was chief of the Indian Army during the Kargil
conflict, a monthslong war the two countries fought along the Line of Control
in 1999.
“You know, from the old wars, beheading is
being considered, for the victors, a kind of a big thing they had done, and for
the loser, a big insult that they have suffered,” he said.
Both
the Pakistani and Indian Armies also were imprinted by the British military
tradition, which puts a “massive emphasis on unit loyalty,” said Myra MacDonald,
a journalist and author of “Defeat Is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great
South Asian War.” According to the Indian Army, more than 4,500 Indian soldiers
have been killed or injured along the Line of Control since 2001.
“If
you see a couple of your mates killed, you certainly would be in a blind rage
to avenge them,” she said. “This is what happens when men fight wars. On one
hand, you know where the limits are, and on the other hand, you get this ground-level
rage when you see the man next to you killed.”
Senior
officers would be aware of the cross-border raids, which require operational
planning and often serve to lift troops’ morale. But political leaders would
not typically be in the loop, and they are often the ones “keen on ensuring the
conflict doesn’t escalate,” said Arun Mohan Sukumar, an analyst at the Observer
Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based policy research group.
“There
is a degree of helplessness in not being able to control the consequences when
something like this happens,” Mr. Sukumar said.
In
the latest beheadings, on May 1, two Indian soldiers were part of a team
patrolling between two posts when a Pakistani “border action team” — often a
combination of militants and regular Pakistani forces — attacked and killed
them, the Indian Army said.
“Pakistan
Army is a professional army,” said Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor, a spokesman. “There
is no history of Pakistan Army desecrating a dead body, no matter it is from India
Ishwar
Chand, 28, whose father, Prem Sagar, was one of the two men beheaded in that
attack, said that his father’s body was missing its head and hands.
“There
was no neck even,” he said. “How can we believe this is the body of our father?
We are told by officials that the army will not lie in this situation.”
He
said he expected a vigorous retaliation.
“The
government should take revenge for my father,” he said. “There is not much
population on the border. The army should be given orders to fire back, to
shoot.”
The
beheaded man’s relatives, outraged at what had happened, took a hard line with
the government, threatening not to cremate the body unless they received a
visit from Prime Minister Narendra Modi or from Yogi Adityanath, the chief
minister of their state, Uttar Pradesh.
Ten
days later, Mr. Adityanath and his entourage made a 15-minute visit to the
village, delivered more than $9,000 in compensation to the family and promised
Mr. Chand a government job.
In
advance of the meeting, officials arrived to install air-conditioning, carpets
and sofas in the family’s home, and a generator was installed to supply
uninterrupted power, Mr. Chand said. Within minutes of Mr. Adityanath’s
departure, all the amenities were removed. Though other relatives grumbled, Mr.
Chand said it was good enough.
“I
would have been happier if he would have met us as we are,” he said. “Whatever
it is, he spared time for us. That is a big thing.”
Salman
Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad , Pakistan
Relatives
and friends carried the coffin of Subedar Paramjit Singh this month in
the village of Vein Poin India
de facto border
between India Pakistan
Credit Prabhjot Gill/Associated Press
