NEW DELHI: A furious backlash erupted in India on Saturday over a video of an Indian pilot shot down by Pakistan praising his captors, as deadly tensions simmered between the neighbours with fierce shelling across their Kashmir frontier.
Soldiers again targeted each other’s posts and villages along the volatile frontier, resultig in the deaths of at least six civilians with six others wounded, officials said on Saturday.
Media reports said the return of Wing Cmdr Abhinandan Varthaman to India had been held up because the pilot was forced to make a video before his release.
Abhinandan, whose MiG fighter was shot down on Wednesday as he chased Pakistani jets over disputed Kashmir, crossed at the Wagah frontier late Friday, several hours after the scheduled ceremony.
His capture had become the centrepiece of hostilities between the arch-rivals since a suicide bombing in Kashmir last month killed 40 Indian paramilitaries.
Abhinandan, who ejected to safety but was set upon by a crowd on the Pakistani side of the ceasefire line that divides Kashmir, had a noticeable black eye and was immediately taken for a medical checkup and a debriefing by military and intelligence agencies.
In the heavily edited video distributed by the Pakistani military just before his release, he praised the professionalism of the Pakistani army and criticised Indian media for creating war hysteria.
“The army personnel saved me from the mob. The Pakistani army is very professional and I am impressed by it,” he said.
Omar Abdullah, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state, said the video tainted Pakistan’s gesture to return the pilot so quickly.
“Sadly the image you paint for us is marred terribly by the video he’s forced to record just before you sent him back,” Abdullah said on Twitter.
“That high moral ground you had bequeathed to yourselves slipped at the end.”
Indian media slammed the video as “distasteful” and said it breached international norms for prisoners of war.
“There is no peace without dignity and Pakistan just forgot that basic lesson in violation of Geneva convention,” wrote Rajdeep Sardesai, a top editor with the India Today group.
India’s feverish social media also slammed the video, which was tweeted by the Pakistan government but later taken off its official account.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry has insisted Abhinandan was “treated with dignity and in line with international law”.
Pakistani media praised the government for releasing the pilot. In the Express Tribune, lawyer Shahzaib Khan wrote that Pakistanis “have a reason to boast … the Prime Minister (Imran Khan) has done Pakistan proud by not engaging in chest thumping or war-mongering for political gain.”
Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since their independence from British rule in 1947.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training the rebels and sending them into Indian-controlled Kashmir to launch attacks against government targets. Pakistan denies the charge, saying it provides moral and diplomatic support to Kashmiris fighting for right to self-determination.
Rebel groups have been fighting Indian rule since 1989 and demand that Kashmir be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the region, and most people support the rebels' cause against Indian rule while also participating in civilian street protests against Indian control.
Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown.
