Pakistan summoned India’s chargé d’affaires on Saturday after two Pakistani civilians were shot dead and another wounded by Indian Border Security Force personnel near the Bedian sector in Kasur. Islamabad says Azmat Rasool and Mohsin Jutt were unarmed residents of Ladhar village who had moved only a few steps beyond a border pillar when the BSF opened fire without warning. It has demanded an investigation, action against those responsible and a formal account of what happened.Learn Hindi
The Indian version, reported in its media, is that the men were attempting to enter Indian territory. Even so, that does not explain why lethal force was necessary. Borders have to be guarded and unauthorised crossings prevented, but neither consideration establishes why unarmed civilians could not have been challenged, detained or turned back.
New Delhi would do well to recall that at formal BSF-Rangers talks in 2015, India and Pakistan specifically discussed inadvertent crossings by people living near the border and ways of facilitating their return. An Indian government statement issued after those talks recorded agreement that the security of border populations was a primary concern and that “utmost caution and care” would be exercised while dealing with civilians. Professional border management depends precisely on the ability to distinguish such cases from armed infiltration.
If India has evidence that the two men were armed, carrying contraband, engaged in hostile activity or presented an immediate danger to BSF personnel, it should produce it. If the allegation amounts only to an attempted crossing, the label “infiltrator” cannot provide the threat that the circumstances themselves have yet to establish.
The location adds another reason for concern. This was the Punjab international boundary, not an active Line of Control sector where exchanges of fire have historically been more common. The international border has generally remained considerably quieter. Normalising lethal force in such stretches would make precisely the sort of routine border incident for which bilateral procedures exist far more difficult to contain.
Relations are already brittle.
Only a day earlier, Pakistan had publicly challenged an Indian claim regarding the killing of an alleged militant by presenting the man whom Indian media had identified as dead, making it all the more important that security labels rest on credible evidence.
