Jawans cross LoC to lend a hand to Pak

It's a few small steps but here, in a region where standing eyeball to eyeball is second nature, it’s a huge leap across a gaping divid...

It’s a few small steps but here, in a region where standing eyeball to eyeball is second nature, it’s a huge leap across a gaping divide.

For the first time, Indian soldiers today crossed the Line of Control to help Pakistani soldiers in relief and rescue.

This happened near the collapsed Aman Setu, the steel symbol of the Indo-Pak peace process. Kaman Post, India’s last bunker overlooking the bridge, is in shambles but many soldiers were lucky. Not so on the other side.

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So yesterday, when two officers and four men of the Pak Army came looking for their colleagues, Indian jawans came out of the rubble of Kaman Post, crossed the KDK nallah into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to offer help. But the Pak soldiers left after surveying the damage.

Today, a group of 10 Pak soldiers appeared on the curve, where once the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road took a left turn towards Chakoti, and asked for help. ‘‘Then our jawans crossed over (the LoC) and helped them reconstruct their bunker,’’ Col Hemant Joneja of Army’s 15 Corps confirmed to The Indian Express.

Army officials said that given that the damage is much more severe on the Pakistani side of the LoC, there was little chance of finding Pakistan Army survivors. But the new cooperation has brought in new hope.

Col Joneja says that Indian Army personnel deployed in forward bunkers in Tangdhar had also offered help to Pak soldiers who had come for rescue missions. The Pakistan Army recently returned an Indian soldier after he had inadvertently crossed the LoC while escaping nature’s fury. The first-ever IAF cargo plane carrying relief material too has flown to Islamabad.