Army chief Bipin Rawat warns Pakistan: Second surgical strike if it is required

Army Chief General Bipin Rawat (File Photo)

Stating that the surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) last year were meant to send a message to Pakistan, Army chief General Bipin Rawat on Monday warned that similar strikes can occur again if the neighbouring country “does not behave”.

“Surgical strikes were a message that we wanted to communicate, and I think they understand that,” General Rawat said after releasing the 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 kind of activities.”

“But there are also other ways of doing these things and (they may) not take the same form,” he said.
Responding to the threat of increasing infiltration along the Line of Control, General Rawat said, “They (militants) would keep coming, and we would keep receiving them and bury them.”

He said that following the surgical strikes, “we are now more capable of taking decisions keeping our national interests in mind”. Observing that the country was “poor in recording history”, he hoped that some day personal accounts of bravery of soldiers would also find their way into school textbooks.

On September 29 last year, India had conducted surgical strikes on terror launch pads across the LoC to avenge the terrorist attack on Uri military base which had led to the death of 19 soldiers.