May 7, 2005	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 27, 1426

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NEW DELHI, May 6: The Indian army came under heavy attack on Friday for putting soldiers at risk in a gigantic operation to clear more than a million landmines laid along the border during a near-war with Pakistan in 2002. The Comptroller and Auditor-General watchdog said the manual demining was a result of the army’s failure to import hardware in good time after the 20-month military standoff.

“The delay in getting robotic equipment to defuse over one million landmines laid along the western front had led the army to clear substantial landmines manually, with a high degree of risk to human life,” the federal watchdog said in a report. Dozens of soldiers were killed and hundreds more maimed while clearing mines laid from Kashmir to Punjab and Rajasthan.

India deployed some 500,000 soldiers, heavy armour and artillery along its borders with Pakistan after a December 2001 attack on parliament in New Delhi. The national watchdog said the military was supposed to have imported 40 demining systems by October 2002 to minimise the risk but failed to secure the hardware in time.

Only 1,182 landmines were defused with the help of the imported hardware, the cost of which was not revealed.—AFP