NEW DELHI, Aug 16:
The stand-off between jawans and officers in an armoured regiment deployed at Samba in Jammu last week was not provoked by the suicide of a soldier of the unit, Army Chief Gen Bikram Singh asserted today.
In an interaction on the sidelines of a function, the Army Chief said the force has instituted two separate Court of Inquiries to probe the incidents.
“We have instituted two separate Court of Inquiries. There was no connection between the suicide and the incident,” he said when asked about the Samba incident.
“Let me tell you that the situation is not that bad. We have already ordered a Court of Inquiry and we are looking to go into the reasons”, Gen Singh said.
Asked if the incidents were a cause of worry for the force, the Army Chief said, “These are isolated incidents.
Gen Bikram Singh said such incidents were “isolated” and the force was trying to strengthen its culture.
“As far as atmosphere in battalions is concerned, we are looking into them and trying to correct them,” he said.
“We have been trying to address these issues. I have been addressing the troops and officers and I will be going to Siachen tomorrow and there also, I will do the same thing,” he said.
The CoI to probe the stand-off between officers and jawans is being headed by a Brigadier-rank officer of the 9 Corps based in Yol Cantt.
On August 8, officers and jawans in 16 Cavalry Unit deployed at Samba were engaged in a stand-off after the suicide of a jawan Arun V hailing from Thiruvananthapuram.
The officers of the unit had to be shifted outside their residences after they were surrounded by the jawans.
In the last one year, there have been three separate incidents of stand off between officers and jawans at different places.
The last such incident took place in May at an artillery unit in Nyoma where several officers and jawans were injured, including its Commanding Officer.
Another incident took place at 45 Cavalry Unit in Gurdaspur where officers and jawans clashed with each other after a training session.
Meanwhile, against the backdrop of attack by militants on a Pakistani air force base, Gen Singh said Indian military installations are “well protected and defended”.
“We have our procedures in place. All our bases are protected and there are Standard Operating Procedures and our bases are well defended,” the Army Chief said.
Gen Singh said the armed forces also had the “means to generate intelligence regarding such threats that may come up to these bases”.
Indian armed forces have taken several measures to strengthen their security to protect against such threats in the last few years, he said.
A group of terrorists armed with sophisticated weapons and suicide vests today stormed a key Pakistan Air Force base in Punjab province that is believed to house nuclear weapons, triggering an intense gun battle that left seven attackers and a security personnel dead.
Asked to comment on the violence in Assam, Gen Singh said the Army was “fulfilling its constitutional obligation” there.
Fresh incidents of violence were reported in Assam’s Baksa and Kamrup (Rural) districts where unidentified persons set ablaze a car, a bus and a wooden bridge.
Baksa, in lower Assam and under the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD), was one of the districts affected in the recent clashes between Bodos and immigrants that has claimed 77 lives so far. (PTI)
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