Jammu/New Delhi: A month after Pakistan’s new PM Imran Khan spoke about peace with India, a BSF constable had his throat slit and eyes gouged out by Pakistani troops along the India-Pakistan international border.
Head Constable Narender Kumar’s bullet-ridden, mutilated body was found on the zero line.
A statement released by the BSF said that on Tuesday Narender went missing around 10:40 am. His patrol party had gone to clear the overgrowth of elephant grass (Sarkanda) in the Ramgarh sector when they came under fire from Pakistan.
“The patrol party returned the fire and tactically extracted itself to its side of the fence. They found one member of the patrol party missing,” said a BSF official.
The BSF officials said that the area in which the jawan went missing was marshy and covered with elephant grass. This made the search difficult. Official sources told PTI that the body of Head Constable Narender Kumar could only be retrieved from a spot ahead of the India-Pakistan border fence after over six hours as the Pakistani side “did not respond to the calls to maintain the sanctity of the frontier and ensure that the BSF search parties were not fired upon.
“It was only in the evening that his body was found with multiple injuries on his neck, torso and back,” a BSF official said. The BSF attributed the injuries to “unprovoked Pak firing” but experts questioned the if the neck injury was from an attempt to behead the soldier.
“This is cowardice on part of Pakistan. They tried to behead him. Attempt was also made to gouge out his eyes it seems. This incident has made us angry. We need to take Pakistan’s threat seriously. Losing a soldier is bad enough but getting a body mutilated is shameful. High time we hit back. Imran or no Imran nothing is going to change as long as Pakistan army will call the shots,” defence expert Raj Kadiyan told CNN-News18.
Photographs of the body seen by CNN-News18 clearly show a deep gash around the neck of the martyred soldier. His eyes also appeared to be gouged out.
The BSF has raised the matter with Pakistan Rangers at the sector level and also requested DGMO to take it up at its own level.
“The issue of unprovoked firing and loss of a BSF trooper has strongly been protested with Pak Rangers,” said BSF official.
The Pakistan Rangers, as per BSF sources, were requested to do joint patrolling to help the BSF locate the missing jawan but “they only came upto a point and then cited water logging in their area to refrain from taking any coordinated action,” PTI said quoting Indian officials.
This is the first instance in recent memory where a jawan has been mutilated at the international border.
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(With PTI inputs)
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