General Bipin Rawat meets NSA Ajit Doval over security in Jammu and Kashmir

NEW DELHI: A day after meeting Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat called on National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to brief him on the situation in Kashmir, apprising him of the growing tensions in the wake of an ongoing ‘war of the videos’.

General Rawat met the NSA at his residence for a briefing on the state of security in Jammu and Kashmir, even as the Army is investigating a video that depicted a Rashtriya Rifles (RR) unit tying a citizen to a jeep leading a convoy of officials on election duty in the state.

While a court of inquiry – a legal process that can lead to disciplinary or administrative action — has not been ordered into the matter, the Army has said it probing the contents of the video and reviewing the circumstances that led a junior officer to use a ‘human shield’. The junior officer, who is from the Army Service Corps and is deputed to RR for counter insurgency duty, is learnt to have told his seniors that he ran out of options after being faced with a situation in which he was tasked to rescue a polling team from a stone pelting mob. “The officer said he was tasked with rescuing 12 election duty officials, nine paramilitary soldiers and two policemen and was facing a crowd of over 700 stone pelters,” an official told ET. After completing its preliminary inquiry, the Army will take a call on whether to initiate a formal court of inquiry, sources said.

The Army, meanwhile, is preparing for a rough summer, with indications that militants are being pushed aggressively from Pakistan-controlled soil. Even with the snow yet to melt on the passes, there have been several infiltration attempts, including one in the Keran sector on April 10.