DNA Edit: Shameless treatment

India’s military establishment is known for its restraint. Its history will show that it has never been the first party to open assault. However, the history of our Armed Forces will also show that it will hold back no punches when attacked unprovoked.

Pakistan got a taste of this treatment when Indian Army troops crossed the LoC earlier this week and neutralised three Pakistani army regulars soldiers and left one injured. In a departure from the usual practice, the ISI’s PR wing has accepted that the Indian Army did inflict damage on its forces. Sources told DNA that the actual loss of life to its Army could be much higher than what has been claimed by ISPR. This mini surgical strike was in retaliation to Pakistan’s ceasefire violation last week in Rajouri that left three Indian Army officers dead. The Indian Army rubbed some more salt in their wounds by eliminating the four-feet-tall Noor Mohammad Tantray, better known as ‘Chhota Noora’, in an encounter in Pulwama district in south Kashmir on Tuesday morning. Obviously, the higher-ups in the Pakistani military and civilian establishment are caught unawares with the Indian policy of ‘an eye for an eye’.

Wanting to get back at India, the top brass chose to take the dishonourable way out by gratuitously humiliating the kin of Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been put on the death row in Pakistan on the trumped-up charges of spying.

One wonders why was Kulbushan’s wife was forced to remove her mangalsutra, bangles and bindi. What possible security threat is embedded in these three items, the markers of a married Hindu woman? The answer lies a little deeper: Obviously, nothing was to be gained by removing these items except getting away with harassing Kulbhushan’s family. It is not just his wife but even Kulbhushan’s mother who was harassed. Imagine, for a moment, the plight of a mother meeting her son after years and forced to communicate via intercom and through a glass blockade. Not just that, the mother was repeatedly asked not to communicate in her mother tongue even when all parties concerned were aware that this could possibly be the last time that Kulbhushan’s mother would be meeting him. Reports suggest that after being repeatedly admonished for communicating in her mother tongue, she was asked not to speak anymore.

All of this despite the fact that the meeting was being conducted under strict supervision and was being recorded. However, this is not the end. A video is circulating online which shows Kulbhushan’s wife and mother standing at some distance from the media jamboree, possibly after the meeting with Kulbhushan. After being harassed by diplomatic cadres, it was now the Pakistani media’s turn to take potshots at the two. Distinctly audible in the video are shouts from media personnel asking them about their emotions after meeting their “murderer of a son?”. Pakistan was hoping to score diplomatic brownie points in this endeavour but India will expose them for their hypocrisy.