Jawan kills 6 in North-East

In one of the worst case of fratricidal killings in the paramilitary forces, a jawan of the Assam Rifles shot dead six of his colleagues, including a junior commissioned officer, at a remote motor vehicle checkpost in Manipur’s Ukhrul district late on Wednesday night.

The incident took place at Awang Kasom, about 15 km west of Chingai sub divisional headquarters, where troops of the Assam Rifles are on duty at a road checkpost.

Rifleman T.S. Tangkhul, who was probably on duty, got into a heated altercation with his JCO and shot him dead with his service rifle.

Hearing the gunshots, five other jawans rushed in and Tangkhul found himself surrounded by five of his unit colleagues who tried to disarm him.

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War is last option, says Army Chief

Confirming that Pakistan had moved troops from its western to its eastern borders, Indian Army Chief Gen. Deepak Kapoor said on Wednesday that India was keeping all its options open, and that the “military option is the last option”. Addressing his annual press conference here on the eve of Army Day on Thursday, Gen. Kapoor said: “There is a larger amount of tension since 26/11. We feel the perpetrators (of the Mumbai terror attack) came from Pakistani soil. We in India are keeping all our options open. This is not hysteria for war, but all options are open — diplomatic, economic and the last resort is the fighting option.”

He went on: “The military option is the last option. The decision is on the political leadership. The political leadership has said that war is not an option but (that) all options are open.”

Gen. Kapoor confirmed that a section of Pakistani troops deployed till now in its Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) have now been deployed at Pakistan’s eastern borders (with India). “We are aware of it,” he said.

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Target Islamabad

The government came under increasing pressure on Sunday to take decisive action in the wake of the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, as the clamour for suspending the five-year-old composite dialogue process with Pakistan grew louder.

With the Opposition parties upping the ante and seeking appropriate measures to deter Pakistan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was weighing his options so that his government was seen to be doing its utmost in the runup to the general elections.

The government, fighting off demands to suspend all confidence building measures such as rail and air links with Pakistan, is understood to have put the Indian cricket team’s forthcoming tour of Pakistan on hold.

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More Army officers may face Anti-Terrorist Squad questioning

After the arrest of Lt.Col. P.S. Purohit, more serving officers of the Indian Army could face questioning by Maharashtra’s anti-terrorist squad in connection with the Malegaon bomb blast conspiracy case. Till late Thursday evening, sources in the military insisted the Army was yet to get any request from the Mumbai ATS to question more serving officers. But speculation was rife that it was only a matter of time before it did so.

This indicates that suspicions exist of a wider conspiracy by right-wingers within the Army. With the Intelligence Bureau also probing the case, the Army’s own Military Intelligence may also conduct an investigation on whether the Malegaon blast conspiracy involves more serving officers.

This is all the more so as Lt. Col. P.S. Purohit is himself a military intelligence officer. The Mumbai ATS and IB investigation may also soon focus on Lt. Col. Purohit’s close friends in the Army, to see if they had any inkling of the alleged terror conspiracy.

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