KARACHI: This is with reference to your editorial “War crimes” (February 4), highlighting the incidents that took place on the Line of Control (LoC), in which Pakistan has presented reports to the UNMOGIP giving details of soldiers and civilians killed. On the other hand, India has accused Pakistan of beheading an Indian soldier on the LoC and the mutilation of the body of another soldier. Likewise Pakistan has also accused India of committing the same offence and has denied the Indian accusations.
Karan Thapar, an Indian journalist, in a dispatch to Hindustan Times on February 19 has exposed the Indians, while condemning the incidents on the LoC. He has cited several incidents where Indian soldiers have beheaded Pakistani soldiers and displayed their heads in their formation headquarters. In her “Confessions of a War Reporter”, Barkha Dutt recounted how she witnessed a decapitated Pakistani soldier’s head during the Kargil war. Harinder Baweja witnessed something similar, which has been told in her book A Soldier’s Diary, Kargil — the inside story. The head was sent to Brigade Headquarters at Drass and pinned to a tree trunk. What more proof is required by Indians when their own media is so vocal about what the Indian soldiers have been doing to Pakistani soldiers, both in the recent past and during the Kargil war.
Beheading of soldiers, irrespective of which country they belong to, is inhuman and unacceptable. When tempers cool down, both sides should sit together and ensure that such barbarity is not committed by either side.
Lt Col (retd) Mukhtar Ahmed Butt
Published in The Express Tribune, February 7th, 2013.
