Devendra Kumar Pathak did not get much sleep on the three nights he spent at the border in Jammu & Kashmir earlier this week. Besides being alongside his men inside border outposts as bullets rained across the frontier, the director-genera l of Border Security Force (BSF) got encouraging calls from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, exhorting him to return fire with fire. Pathak, in the twilight of his long career in the Indian Police Service, much of which has been spent fighting terrorism and insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir and Assam, is now the man fighting Modis war with Pakistan on the international border. Although cross-border violations are nothing new, the sheer intensity has made many rate the ongoing skirmish as the worst in a decade. And much of the action this time has been along the international border, which BSF guards, rather than the Line of Control ( LoC) overseen by the army. We have decided we will give Pakistan a thrashing for their misadventure this time. We have given them a very solid pounding and the loss on the other side is very heavy, Pathak told ET on Friday. We have fired many more times the rounds Pakistan has fired. They have been silenced. With his tenure set to last until February 2016 in the post, Pathak is the key man for Modi as things are expected to be on edge at the border given the new, aggressive strategy of engagement. Incidentally, Pathak was the UPA govts choice for BSF director- genera l this April. Top sources in the new government said there could not be a better candidate for the key job given his years of experience on both the frontiers that BSF guards — those with Pakistan and Bangladesh Hailing from Bihar, he joined the IPS in 1979 at 23 in the Assam- Meghalaya cadre and held charge of four districts as senior superintendent of police (SSP) in the two states at the height of the insurgency there. At the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), he was entrusted with raising the elite, specialist anti-Naxal force CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action). It is, however, his deep knowledge of Jammu & Kashmir that is coming in handy for the government amid the unprecedented crisis on the western front. Pathak was CRPF inspector general in Srinagar as well as CRPF special director- genera l of the Jammu & Kashmir zone before he shifted to BSF last year as special director and then became DG. I do know Pakistan and J&K well, he told ET. That is why I feel though Pakistan has stopped firing today, you never know what will happen tomorrow. After all, they broke their earlier promise from August to not resort to unprovoked firing. Home minister Rajnath Singh told Pathak to rush to Jammu on October 6 after firing intensified on the eve of Eid. Sources said Modi spoke to Pathak on multiple occasions while he was in Jammu, exhorting him to raise the morale of his forces and hit back with heavy retaliatory fire. It is rare for a PM to speak directly to the BSF chief... Usually the home minister or the home secretary remain in touch with the DG. But this time, from national security advisor Ajit Doval to the home minister and the PM, he was the direct go-to man, one of the persons said. Pathak declined to reveal what Modi told him. The PM and defence minister made a public statement on our response, he said. He, however, said that spending tense nights in border outposts with his men and visiting all sectors on the international border was a conscious decision. You have to do this to show the men that their DG is alongside them. It boosts their morale, he said. On one such night, while Pathak was at an outpost in RS Pura, India fired at 65 Pakistani border outposts inside 15 minutes.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 11:56:35 +0000
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