On Wednesday, the Indian Army’s special forces in Kashmir eliminated the Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT) of five enemy soldiers, a government official said.
The offensive was conducted along the Line of Control (LoC,) in the Muzaffarabad sector by the Army’s Para (special forces,) the official said on condition of anonymity. BAT is a special Pakistani army unit which conducts cross border operations.
“General Bipin Rawat has given the go ahead to the Para (SF) to conduct a search and elimination operation of BAT teams of Pakistan. Heightened low grade warfare is likely to take place this summer,” the government official said.
On May 1, BAT raided the Krishna Ghati sector at the border, killing and mutilating two Indian soldiers. On May 22, the Indian Army launched a series of punitive assaults on the Pakistan bunkers and released a video documenting another set of assaults on the Pakistan bunkers in the Naushera sector.
“The army will be targeting bunkers. We will not wait for more of our men to die along the border or for more soldiers to be mutilated by Pakistan before we take action,” the official added
While the Army did not officially clarify this it stated that assaults were part of a routine exercise.
“These are routine things. They keep happening. Things have not escalated because it’s part of a routine exercise,” the Army spokesperson Ashok Narula said.
A defense official said, “Army was going back to its methodology of the 1990s, with a more sophisticated approach.”
On Sunday, General Rawat asserted that the Indian Army was fighting an asymmetric war in Kashmir. But on May 24, the Defense Minister Arun Jaitley gave the Army full authority to carry out operations in Kashmir as they deemed fit.
