New Delhi: Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday assured that all military and diplomatic attempts were being made to secure the release of an Indian soldier who inadvertently crossed over to Pakistan on Thursday.
“All attempts are being made to secure his release,” Rajnath told reporters after attending a crucial meeting to discuss the internal security situation.
Twenty-two-year-old soldier Chandu Babulal Chohan crossed the Line of Control (LoC) on Thursday, the day when the Indian army carried out surgical strikes inside Pakistan Administered Kashmir.
India said it had carried out surgical strikes on seven terror launch pads across the LoC with the Army inflicting “significant casualties” on terrorists preparing to infiltrate.
Chohan, however, was not a part of the surgical strike, the army later clarified.
Defence sources also confirmed the same stating that “one soldier from 37 Rashtriya Rifles unit carrying a weapon has inadvertently crossed over to the other side of the Line of Control. Pakistan has been informed by the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) on the hotline. Such inadvertent crossing by Army and civilians are not unusual on either side. They are made to go back through existing mechanisms.”
Indian army’s head of military operations General Ranbir Singh spoke to his Pakistani counterpart on Friday morning, asking that the soldier be sent back.
The Indian Army has also rejected as “false and baseless” reports in a section of Pakistani media that eight Indian soldiers were killed and one captured by Pakistani military in retaliatory fire.
Meanwhile, violating ceasefire, Pakistani troops opened fire from small arms along LoC in Jammu and Kashmir’s Akhnoor district on Friday.
“There was small arms firing from Pakistan on forward posts along the LoC in Pallanwala, Chapriyal and Samnam areas of Jammu district during the night. There was no loss of life or injury to anyone in the firing,” Simrandeep Singh, Deputy Commissioner, Jammu told media.
Also a soldier who was critically injured in the Uri attack of September 18 succumbed to his wounds on Friday, taking the toll in the September 18 terror strike to 19.
The soldier was undergoing treatment at the Army Research and Referral Hospital in New Delhi.
