Will repeat surgical strikes if Pakistan continues to send terrorists: Indian Army chief

Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat said on Monday that it would repeat the surgical strikes it conducted last year if Pakistan continued to send terrorists across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir.

He added that if terrorists were ready to infiltrate India, the Indian Army was also prepared to strike them down.

"Surgical strike was conducted to send a message and if adversaries do not understand, it will be repeated," General Rawat said."We are ready to receive the terrorists that come this side of the LoC and will send them to their right place, their graves," the army chief said at a book launch.

Gen Rawat also said India had a range of retaliatory options available to thwart Pakistan's nefarious actions.

"I said that these surgical strikes were a message that we had communicated and that if required, and if the adversary does not behave, then if we have to continue these kind of activities and events, we will continue. But there are other ways doing these things of course and they may not take the same form," he said.

The army chief's statement comes two days after security forces foiled a terrorist attack on an army unit in Uri in Kashmir's restive Baramulla district.

On September 18 last year, terrorists suspected to be from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad carried out a suicide attack on an army camp in Uri which claimed the lives of 19 soldiers. The attack was one of the deadliest attacks on security forces in Kashmir in two decades. 

India responded with surgical strikes on terrorist launchpads across the LoC on September 29.