NEW DELHI: As India ordered an inquiry into a complaint by a Border Security Force (BSF) trooper at the Line of Control (LoC) that he and his colleagues were served bad food, the soldier said on Tuesday he has been transferred to the headquarters as a plumber.

Tej Bahadur Yadav posted videos alleging that troops are served bad quality food and sometimes they even go hungry, The Hindu said on Tuesday.

The videos, posted by the constable of the BSF’s 29th battalion, have gone viral, it said.

India Today said the video focused on the seemingly poor quality of food served to jawans stationed in the challenging terrains of Jammu and Kashmir. It quoted Yadav as saying that he has been transferred from the BSF camp back to the headquarters and has been assigned a plumber’s duty.

He also said that his commandant had tried to get him to take down the video.

Yadav said that he believed that authorities won’t target him since the video had gone viral also saying, “I am not afraid of losing my job...I have shown what the reality is at the post”.

“If soldiers [are] benefited because of me, then I am ready to fight,” the jawan added, going on to say that a lot will be revealed once an inquiry is carried out.

In videos uploaded on Facebook on Sunday evening, the trooper, wearing camouflage uniform and carrying a rifle, claimed that while the government procured essentials for them, the higher-ups and officers “sold it off” in an “illegal” manner in the market.

In three different videos, clocking over four minutes and released online, Yadav (40) shows the food that is being allegedly served to him.

“We only get a ‘parantha’ and tea as breakfast and this is without any pickle or vegetables… we slog for 11 hours and at times we have to stand throughout the duty hours. For lunch, we get ‘dal’ [pulses], which only has ‘haldi’ [turmeric] and salt… with roti. This is the quality of the food we get… how can a jawan do his duty? “I request the prime minister to get this probed… no one shows our plight,” Yadav alleged.

Published in Dawn January 11th, 2017