The Indian Embassy in Indonesia has issued a clarification, stating that remarks made by Defence Attache Captain Shiv Kumar regarding Operation Sindoor were taken "out of context" and constitute a “misrepresentation" of the content of his presentation.
The controversy arose after the defence attache in Indonesia detailed the Indian military's response in the initial phase of Operation Sindoor at a seminar in an Indonesian university.
'Quoted out of context'
In a statement issued on X, the embassy said, "We have seen media reports regarding a presentation made by the Defence Attache at a Seminar. His remarks have been quoted out of context and the media reports are a mis-representation of the intention and thrust of the presentation made by the speaker."
"The presentation conveyed that the Indian Armed Forces serve under civilian political leadership unlike some other countries in our neighbourhood. It was also explained that the objective of Operation Sindoor was to target terrorist infrastructure and the Indian response was non-escalatory," the statement added further.
What did the defence attache say?
The Indian Navy Captain, who was speaking at a seminar on "Analysis of the Pakistan-India Air Battle and Indonesia's Anticipatory Strategies from the Perspective of Air Power" at a university in Jakarta, suggested that the Indian Air Force 'lost fighter jets' in the initial phase of Operation Sindoor as it was constrained by the mandate to not attack Pakistani military establishment and only target terrorist infrastructure.
In his presentation on June 10, the Indian defence attache said in view of some "constraints" owing to the mandate decided by the "political leadership", the Indian Air Force could not attack Pakistani military installations in the initial phase operation.
"We did lose some aircraft and that happened only because of the constraint given by the political leadership to not attack the military establishment or their air defence system," he said.
"But after the loss, we changed our tactics and we went for the military installations. So we first achieved suppression and destruction of enemy air defence and then that is why all our attacks could easily go through using surface-to-air missiles and Brahmos surface-to-surface missiles," he said.
(With PTI inputs)
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