New Delhi: General (r) Shankar Roychowdhury, former chief of the Indian Army, said that the primary responsibility for the deaths of Central Reserve Police Force soldiers in the Pulwama incident rests “on the government headed by the Prime Minister, who is advised by the national security adviser [Ajit Doval]”.
The 18th Chief of Army Staff, in a media interview, was reacting to the revelations made by the former Governor of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir Satya Pal Malik that the 2019 Pulwama incident was the outcome of government incompetence and negligence.
“The primary responsibility behind the loss of lives in Pulwama rests on the government headed by the Prime Minister, who is advised by the national security adviser [NSA]. This was a setback,” General Roychowdhury said. He said that NSA Ajit Doval should “also get his share of the blame” for the intelligence failure behind the incident.
A convoy of 78 vehicles carrying over 2,500 personnel should not have taken a highway, General Roychowdhury, who commanded the 16 Corps in IIOJK between 1991 and 1992, added.
The former Army chief said that all large bodies of vehicles and convoys moving along the Srinagar-Jammu highway are always vulnerable to attack. He said that the area where the Pulwama incident had occurred had always been a very “vulnerable sector”. He said, the more traffic you pump along the Srinagar-Jammu highway, which connects IIOJK with India, you expose them to risks.
General Roychowdhury also agreed with Satya Pal Malik’s statement that the incident was the result of an intelligence failure as a car that was “roaming around” in Kashmir for days before the incident and could not be located was an intelligence and security system failure. “It’s a slip-up that the government is trying to wash its hands of. I strongly believe that the troops should have been ferried across by aircraft, which are available with the civil aviation department, Air Force or BSF,” the former army chief said, adding, “Failure has no claimants.”
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