Army chief dubs UN report on rights violations in Kashmir as motivated

Gen. Bipin Rawat says the human rights record of the Indian Army is well known to the people of Kashmir and to the international community.

Army Chief Gen. Bipin Rawat on Wednesday slammed the United Nations report on alleged human rights violations in Kashmir, dubbing it as “motivated”.

Chief of Army Staff, General Bipin Rawat meets the family members of late rifleman Aurangzeb at his village Salani in Poonch district of Jammu on June 18, 2018. Aurangzeb was abducted and later killed by militants in Gusoo village of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district on June 14.(PTI Photo)

The human rights record of the Indian Army, he said, was well known to the people of Kashmir and to the international community.

“I don’t need to speak about the human rights record of the Indian Army. It is well known to all of you, it is well known to the people of Kashmir, and to the international community. I don’t think we should get too concerned about the report, some of these reports are motivated,” Rawat told reporters on the sidelines of an event here.

The human rights record of the Indian Army is absolutely above board, he maintained.

In a report released earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Council talked about alleged human rights violations in both Kashmir and Pakistan occupied Kashmir and sought an international inquiry into these abuses.

India had vehemently rejected the report as “fallacious, tendentious and motivated”.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said that the report was “overtly prejudiced” and seeks to build a “false narrative”.