Army tweets about mutilation but had refused to respond to RTI

NEW DELHI: The army today tweeted about the mutilation of the bodies of two Indian soldiers by the Pakistan army, but refused to divulge details about such incidents under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, citing "national security" concerns.

An RTI application seeking to know the number of soldiers whose bodies had been mutilated by intruders on the Line of Control was stonewalled by the army last year.

The Central Information Commission, however, rejected the army's contention that the information was related to national security.

Information Commissioner Diya Prakash Sinha, a former intelligence officer, ordered the army to disclose "the available details ... of soldiers killed in action...

whose bodies were found mutilated."

"People of the country have the right to know about soldiers who lay down their lives in the line of duty," Sinha had said in his order.

In compliance with the order, the army had responded by merely providing the list of personnel who were killed in action along the Line of Control, a temporary border between India and Pakistan, without disclosing if the bodies had been mutilated.

Today, however, the army posted on Twitter a statement from the Northern Command on the mutilation of two soldiers.

"Pakistan Army carried out unprovoked rocket and forward mortar firing on two forward posts on the Line of Control in Krishna Ghati sector. Simultaneously, BAT action was launched on a patrol operating in between the two posts," the Northern Command of the Indian army said in the statement. BAT is the Pakistan army's Border Action Team.