Storyboard: See how India carried out surgical strikes across LoC

India will neither forgive nor forget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared less than a week after the Uri outrage. It wasn’t just rhetoric: Modi had already okayed a strike against Pakistani terrorist launchpads across the Line of Control (LoC).

Updated on: Jan 7, 2017, 12:28:37 IST

Shishir Gupta,Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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India will neither forgive nor forget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared less than a week after the Uri outrage. It wasn’t just rhetoric: Modi had already okayed a strike against Pakistani terrorist launchpads across the Line of Control (LoC).

BSF soldiers patrol along a border fence at an outpost along the Line of Control at Abdulian, some 38 kms southwest of Jammu. (AFP File Photo)

The decision to punish Pakistan was conveyed to defence minister Manohar Parrikar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval on September 23, and the build-up to D-day began the next day.

After examining the options put up by Doval in consultation with the three service chiefs, the surgical strike option was chosen by September 23.

HT pieces together the tale of how India sent soldiers across the LoC, the de-facto border with Pakistan, to destroy terror launchpads.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More