7 January 2002

WAS PAK SPY PLANE REALLY SHOT DOWN?

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah on Monday questioned a Defence Ministry claim that an unmanned Pakistani spy plane was shot down in the Poonch sector Sunday afternoon saying there was no evidence while Pakistan claimed the shot-down remote-controlled aircraft belonged to India.

Talking to reporters here after calling on Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, Farooq said Pakistan's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) may have descended in the Pakistan-administered Kashmir on its own as there was no evidence to prove that it were shot down. Had the Indian guns shot down the aircraft, it should have fallen in the Indian territory, he argued.

In Islamabad, a Pakistani military spokesman dismissed the Indian Army's claim to have shot down the Pakistani aircraft after it flew eight kilometres inside Poonch district and circled over army installations.

"This propaganda is totally baseless and concocted," Pakistani spokesman Brigadier Saulat Raza said. "Actually they themselves have lost one remotely piloted vehicle. We haven't lost any aircraft, neither have we violated Indian-held airspace," he said. He said the Indian aircraft had come down in the Jammu sector of Jammu and Kashmir.

BAN ON MEDIA: Meanwhile, alarmed by the Indian media giving out troops' movements on the borders, the Indian Army has asked the Punjab Government to restrict movement of the media persons in the border areas. The Army pressed the panic button following the reports in the Indian newspapers about several deaths due to accidental explosions of the land mines planted in the border areas recently to prepare for any possible war. So far 22 persons, mostly Army personnel, are reported to have died in such explosions.

According to a report in daily The Tribune from Amritsar, Ferozepur District Magistrate has banned Media coverage of the Army movements and the district magistrates of Amritar and Gurdaspur have also been approached by the Army to impose the ban orders under Section 144 crPC and take action against the erring journalists under Indian Official Secret Act. The report said a similar ban may also be imposed in other border areas of the country, including Rajasthan.

Already, the Indian Official Secret Act, has been invoked and a case registered by the Ferozepore Police, on the request of Army higher officials, against a Jalalabad correspondent of a verncular paper who had given details on the deployment of the Army in the sensitive areas, The Tribune said.

Under the ban orders being clamped in the border districts of Punjab, no media person will be allowed to cover the movements of the Army in the border areas citing the provisions of the Indian Official Secret Act, the daily added.

The Act prohibits passing of any information on mine fields or Army camps and provides for the sentence ranging from three to 14 years for violation. The relevant section says:

"If any person enters any prohibited place or makes any sketch, plan, model which might be or is intended to be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy or obtains records or publishes or communicates to any other person any secret official code or password or any other document, information, he shall be imprisoned for up to 14 years."

The report that provoked the Army authorities to approach the Government for clamping ban on the Media coverage had said that eyewitnesses saw the explosion when some Indian soldiers were unloading a truck filled with land mines while others were fixing fuses on the mines at the village of Mahwa, about 20 km northwest of Amritsar.

"The soldiers were busy working on the devices when suddenly we saw the truck rolling back. In a second, there was a massive explosion. We just ran to save our lives," farmer Ranjit Singh said and added "The bodies of the dead were flung at least 7-8 meters away."

Other eyewitnesses said the truck driver had reversed the truck to let a tractor pass on the narrow road, when it ran over a land mine. The initial blast killed 14 soldiers and three civilians who were in the tractor, police said. END