India Today's Gaurav Sawant interviewed an Indian Army officer in Jammu and Kashmir, who detailed how India launched fierce retaliation against Pakistani army posts.
00:00Unfiltered, unafraid and unmissable. Join us on the front lines with the heroes of Operation Sindur.
00:07From forward bases staring down Pakistan, witness the men, the machines and the sheer grit behind India's precision strikes on our neighbour.
00:16Take a look at this exclusive ground report by Gaurav Savant.
00:19Thank you very much.
00:49Pakistan retaliated by targeting civilian areas and then there was Lanka Dehen, the burning of Lanka.
01:00I want to take you back in India's civilizational history.
01:04Remember Lord Hanuman had set Ravad ki Lanka on fire.
01:10These braves, these braves of the Rajput Regiment.
01:14The braves of the Rajput Regiment and their motto is Bajrang Bali ki jai Hanuman ka hoon piyare hoon.
01:27And with me is the team leader of these braves.
01:32Major, what was your task? What were you tasked to do that day?
01:36The task given to me by my commanding officer was to neutralize the four enemy posts who had fired effectively on our civil areas and Indian army posts in Jammu sector.
01:47In the Jammu sector, usually the Pakistanis do not fire, usually along the international border.
01:55It's usually only around along the line of control.
01:58And during the ceasefire, that also hadn't happened.
02:02But this time Pakistan had escalated and how.
02:05So you were tasked to take down those posts.
02:08But was it a military post or was it also used, you know, from what I've learned to send in terrorists and infiltrators?
02:15Out of those four posts, two were the hybrid posts, which were used as launch pads by terrorists to infiltrate into our country.
02:24And how did you acquire, you know, the target? How did you destroy them? What can you tell us?
02:29We used both our direct and indirect weapons to neutralize and mix all those four posts of enemy with soil.
02:36And which is exactly what even the Prime Minister had said.
02:42And virtue of that effect, any int inputs, any assessment of the impact, of course, we've all seen images and they're playing out on India today right now.
02:55Images of those posts on fire.
02:58But what was the damage across?
03:00As per sources, we were able to inflict near about 18 to 20 casualties onto the enemy.
03:07And these are 18 to 20 fatalities?
03:09Fatal casualties.
03:1018 to 20 fatalities.
03:10Yes, yes.
03:11Regulars, irregulars?
03:13That we cannot ascertain.
03:15But yes, we were able to inflict these many casualties.
03:17And these are the Braves, a part of that team.
03:20Thank you very much for speaking to India today.
03:23And thank you very much for your service to our nation.
03:25Thank you, sir.
03:26Pleasure.
03:27So, these are the Braves.
03:28Remember, terror has to be targeted at source.
03:33For decades, India had been saying, especially after, you'd recall, when Kaluchak was targeted.
03:40Kaluchak is a military station.
03:42When Pakistani terrorists targeted Indian families, they attacked our parliament.
03:47They repeatedly said Pakistani territory will not be used for terror against India.
03:52But 2611 Mumbai terror attacks, Pulwama, Pethankot, Nagrota, there's a long list.
03:58And the army, once the government decided that terror had to be destroyed at source,
04:07these were the weapons that were used along with others, not just to target Pakistani ports
04:14that aid and abet infiltration and terrorism here, but also the headquarters of terror at
04:20Muridke, at Bahawalpur and Pakistan army, whether it's Noor Khan or Jacob Abad or Sargodha
04:28or Raheem Yar Khan from Pakistan-occupied Jammu in Kashmir, Skardu down to Sindh.
04:35That's the way India responds to terror now, the new normal.
04:40Reporting from ground zero with camera person Sanjay Kumar, Gaurav Savant, for India Today.
04:48What was the target that was acquired with me?
04:52Are these young officers who were keeping a hawk eye on the target?
04:56And Major, thank you for joining us here on India Today.
04:59Can you tell us what was the target that you were attempting to acquire?
05:02See, as a backdrop to it, whatever happened on 22nd April and the retaliatory strikes which
05:07happened on 7th of 8th of May, everybody knows that.
05:10However, things changed when on 10th of May, the enemy opened fire, indiscriminate opened
05:15fire on unarmed and defenseless civilian inhabited areas.
05:19So thereafter it was all go.
05:21That means enemy had to be punished very heavily and to the extent that they would have cursed
05:27their being in existence.
05:29So on the basis of a credible input, a firm and intelligence-based driven operation was
05:36undertaken wherein the hybrid operating base of which we had the knowledge from beforehand
05:42and these operating bases were involved in narcotics, indoctrination training, weapon training
05:48and all kinds of such things.
05:49So the targets were there and then we inflicted firm and fierce retaliatory punitive strike via
05:57kinetic means and to that extent that everything was over over there.
06:01So when my commanding officer, he told me in the form of our war cry, Dada Krishnan ki jai
06:06kar de, so that was when the all bombs were dropped and it was all over on the target area.
06:13Yes, that is our war cry of our battalion and the message of the strike was quite clear that
06:22when it is the matter of territorial integrity, the population and our motherland, so nothing
06:28and absolutely nothing will be tolerated and Indian army is always there, has always been
06:33and will continue to annihilate all kinds of threats that may emerge from wherever they
06:39want to be.
06:39Absolutely and that's exactly what Yogeshwar Shri Krishna also said in the Shreemad Bhagavad Gita
06:46where it was a fight between the forces of good and forces of evil.
06:53India represents the forces of good.
06:57Yogeshwar Shri Krishna in the Shreemad Bhagavad Gita tells Arjun,
07:00You take a firm resolve and you fight either ways, victory is yours because if you're killed
07:18in action, you go to heaven.
07:20If you win, then you rule over this earth as beautiful as heaven.
07:26That's the message that the Indian armed forces have also been able to deliver Yuddhai Krithnishjaya.
07:35With cameraman Sanjay Kumar at the international border in the Jammu sector, Gaurav Savant for India Today.
