Army chief Gen Bipin Rawat says Pakistan will sooner rather than later pay for Sunjuwan terror attack

Army Chief General Bipin Rawat on Friday said that the Indian army will give Pakistan a reply “sooner rather than later” for the February 10 terrorist attack on a military camp in Jammu. 

Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists barged into the Sunjuwan military station in Jammu and killed six soldiers and a civilian in a deadly fidayeen attack.

Soon after the incident, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that Pakistan, which she accused of backing the attackers, would pay for its “misadventure”.

“Pakistan thinks it is fighting a war that is paying them dividends but we have several options, including surgical strikes,” the army chief said in an interview on Wednesday, without giving details that would compromise India’s tactical and strategic response.

Rawat said that he would order a ceasefire at the Line of Control (LoC) as soon as Pakistan stops sending terrorists to India. “The Indian Army will honor the ceasefire and de-escalate tensions the day Pakistan stops sending terrorists across the line of control,” Rawat said, referring to the 2003 agreement put in place as a confidence-building measure.

Ceasefire violations at the LoC have spiked over the last year. There were 860 such violations recorded in 2017 from either side, as compared to 271 the previous year, according to government data.