BANGALORE, Feb 7:
Air Force Chief NAK Browne today rejected as “nonsense” the allegation that IAF crew and personnel abandoned an injured policeman in a crippled chopper during an anti-Naxal operation and said “sniping” at each other by security agencies should stop.
“The impression that they abandoned, they ran away, I think this is all nonsense,” he said at a press conference during the Aero India exhibition here. He suggested that the IAF team on the chopper had left the chopper and the injured policeman as they wanted to avoid being taken hostage in the area infested with Maoists.
Expressing surprise at the leakage of a letter in which Home Secretary R K Singh had objected to the conduct of Air Force personnel, the IAF chief said, “the lesson that we all have to draw is that we all to work together as a team in one direction instead of finding faults in one incident.”
He warned that the anti-Naxal operations were going to be a long haul and there were no easy solutions.
“If we keep sniping like this,” what had happened in Kashmir where forces inimical to the country’s interest created divisions between security forces and security agencies could be repeated in the Maoist areas. “I do not think this is the way to function in a situation like this,” he said.
Asked if his comments were directed at the Home Secretary, the Air Chief said it was for “all the agencies” working there.
In an apparent counter-attack on central police forces under the Home Ministry, the IAF chief raised the issue of “lack of sanitisation” for choppers in some of the helipads in Naxal areas, he said, “If this was not taken care off, the IAF choppers would continue to get hit in those areas.’
He was asked on the complaint filed by the Home Ministry against his personnel’s conduct in Naxal operations.
On the decision by his men, he said, “it is a combat zone and bullets were flying as firing continued for half an hour or so.
“By this time it was dark and night. There is an issue that captain and the crew decided that if they were to split up, there was situation of a hostage because that area was full of such people.
“You can imagine the situation if anyone of them had been taken hostage, there would have been another crisis unfolding in next few weeks,” the IAF chief said.
Browne said reports suggesting that the injured policeman was taken away on a motorcycle and was critical were also incorrect.
“The injured trooper was evacuated in an armoured car and not a motorcycle as was reported and taken to Raipur in our chopper and he is not critical.
“One of our officers met him and he was sitting on a sofa having tea,” he said.
He said the reports that the IAF crew left behind the guns on board the chopper were wrong as the machine gun had jammed while landing in the incident which took place on January 18.
The Home Secretary wrote a letter to the Defence Secretary Shashikant Sharma on February 5 asking the latter to institute an inquiry and take appropriate action in connection with the January 16 incident when Maoists’ gunfire had forced an Indian Air Force helicopter to make emergency landing.
A state police wireless operator had suffered gunshot injuries in the incident. (PTI)
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