A good terrorist is a dead terrorist, no use going to UN, says defence advisor during Op Sindoor

Time of India

31-05-2025

Nagpur: Lt Gen (retd) Vinod Khandare, who was principal advisor to the ministry of defence during
, told a select gathering in Nagpur on Friday that terrorists exploited the transition period when 3 Rashtriya Rifles was being pulled out for CRPF deployment and struck in Pahalgam.
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"With 2.5 crore tourists visiting Kashmir, normalcy seemed to have returned, and this created a sense of complacency. Terrorists chose a remote area like Pahalgam to unleash mayhem as the majority of the security forces were stationed in high populated areas. The Army is wired to go, search and mark areas of threat, while CRPF enforces the 'naka-bandi' strategy. It's not their fault, that's how they are trained. It took just one bad day for the attack to happen, despite our round-the-clock surveillance," Lt Gen Khandare revealed during a conversation with Flight Lieutenant Shiwalee Deshpande organised by Prahar Samaj Jagruti Sanstha at Chitnavis Centre here.
"Our strategy has always been to 'Go, Kill and Come Back'. We learnt this from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. The first phase of Operation Sindoor was planned to blow up terror headquarters in
. Not a single soldier crossed the border by land or air. Everything was done beyond the human visual range. We had six back-up plans in place. We wanted to avoid another Abhinandan incident, where the wing commander was taken hostage during the Balakot strikes," he said.
The Lt General reiterated that neither has Operation Sindoor been called off nor has the Indus Water Treaty been restored. "This basically means that Pakistan has no idea what we might do next.
We retain our element of surprise," he said.
The defence apparatus wanted to adopt a different strategy from Uri and Balakot strikes, he said, adding "this time, we decided to attack Pakistan on such a mammoth scale that it won't know what hit them".
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"And for the first time, a hi-tech war was fought. The exit plan was strategized first, and we followed a simple protocol of selecting the target and maintaining it till the end. We decimated their terror launch pads.
Pakistan retaliated by killing our civilians in Poonch and Uri. This is when we decided to bomb their air defence systems. That's the difference between India and Pakistan. They attack our civilians, and we strike their military.
It was the Pak DGMO that appealed for a ceasefire," said the Army veteran and former Commanding Officer of the 14th Battalion, Garhwal Rifles.
"There is only one way to deal with
. Going to the United Nations or appealing to the international community will never work. For us, a good terrorist is a dead terrorist. The record needs to be set straight with Pakistan," he said. He also appealed to the Indian diaspora and the nation's cyber warriors to beat the enemy in the game of cyber bullying.
The former chief of the Defence Intelligence Agency also shared that while the SM-400 Russian air defence system gained a lot of popularity, our homemade air defence guns — the L70 and Zu-23 — created a massive impact of their own. "Initially written off as outdated technology, these systems were revitalised through focused development and strategic upgrades. We equipped them with hydraulic boosts, making them faster and more powerful than before," he said.
Khande added that they integrated proximity fuses along with shrapnel-based munitions into the missiles, allowing each explosion to destroy multiple targets simultaneously. These enhancements transformed the legacy systems into formidable assets on the modern battlefield. He also said that India needs to be more that just a Viksit Bharat — it also must become a 'Surakshit Bharat'.