Army chief General Bipin Rawat warned that surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) can occur again if the neighboring nation “does not behave”. He said that the surgical strikes last year were meant to send a message to Pakistan.
“Surgical strikes were a message that we wanted to communicate, and I think they understand that,” General Rawat said. He was talking at an event where he released a book India’s Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes by Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh. “If required, and if the adversary does not behave, then we have to continue with these kinds of activities,” he said.
“But there are also other ways of doing these things and (they may) not take the same form,” he added. Responding to the threat of rising infiltration along the border, he said, “They (militants) would keep coming, and we would keep receiving them and bury them.”
He said following the surgical strikes, “we are now more capable of taking decisions keeping our national interests in mind”. On 29 September last year, India had conducted surgical strikes on terror launch pads across LoC after the terrorist attacked Uri military base that led to the death of 19 soldiers.
