Delhi and Islamabad each summon the other's charge d'affaires over the Tarn Taran killings
The Border Security Force shot two men on 2 October in the Ferozepur sector. India says three people crossed and ignored warnings. Pakistan says the dead were unarmed civilians. The two foreign ministries exchanged protests on Saturday.
New Delhi2 min read
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India and Pakistan summoned each other's charge d'affaires on Saturday, a day after the Border Security Force killed two men along the international border in Punjab's Tarn Taran district. Each side lodged what it called a strong protest. The facts they protested are not the same facts.
The Ministry of External Affairs said it had called in Pakistan's charge d'affaires over continued facilitation of illegal crossing from Pakistan, and that it rejected Pakistan's account of the 2 October incident in the Ferozepur sector as baseless. Pakistan had already summoned India's charge d'affaires in Islamabad and described the dead men as unarmed civilians who crossed by mistake. The Indian summons came hours after the Pakistani one.
The local account on the Indian side is from Tarn Taran's deputy superintendent of police, Atul Soni. He said three people were moving toward the Indian side around noon on Friday. One turned back. The other two kept coming after BSF warnings to return. A sentry told police the two were provoking the troops and saying they wanted to enter. The BSF then fired. Both men were killed. Soni placed the incident in Tarn Taran. The MEA's protest note placed it in the Ferozepur sector. The two descriptions refer to the same stretch of fence. They are not a disagreement about the district so much as a difference of administrative label.
Pakistan's claim does not offer names in the wire accounts of Saturday. It offers a category: unarmed civilians, inadvertent crossing. India's claim offers a category too: infiltrators, warnings ignored, one of three turned back. Neither side has published a photograph of the bodies, a list of items recovered, or a ballistics note. The diplomatic exchange is running ahead of the evidence file.
Summons of a charge d'affaires is the ordinary tool when both high commissions are still open and neither capital wants a ministerial statement. It puts a written protest on the record and it lets each foreign ministry brief its own press. It does not open a joint inquiry. The MEA's language, "continued facilitation," treats Friday as one in a series. Pakistan's language treats Friday as a killing of civilians. A series and a single killing are different cases. They cannot both be the whole story unless the civilians were also the series, which is the argument India is making and Pakistan is refusing.
The border in Tarn Taran is fenced, farmed and close. A noon crossing is not a night infiltration in the old pattern. Three people, one turning back, two continuing after a warning, is a specific picture if Soni's account holds. It is also the picture a force writes after it has fired. The sentry's line, that the men said they wanted to enter, is the element that turns a crossing into a provocation. It rests on one post. Pakistan has not answered it with a name.
What happens next is usually a flag meeting or a silence. A flag meeting would at least exchange the identities. Silence leaves both protests standing and the bodies unrepatriated in public view. The useful document, which neither ministry has issued, is a name, an age and a village for each of the two dead men. Without that, Saturday's summons are a procedure about an event whose participants are still categories.
