Lance naik Hemraj Singh was found decapitated
The Supreme Court wants to know if the government will take the case of two Indian soldiers who were killed and mutilated on January 8 by Pakistani troops to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. One of the two soldiers was found decapitated.
The court's notice to the Centre, which has four weeks to reply, was based on a Public Interest Litigation or PIL filed by a man named Sarwa Mitter, whose lawyer argued that the government has taken no action after statements were issued by the Defence and External Affairs Ministries, warning Pakistan that India will not tolerate a repeat.
The judges have clubbed this case with that of Captain Saurabh Kalia, who was taken prisoner by Pakistan during the Kargil War of 1999. His body was returned, badly mutilated, to Indian authorities after three weeks. Pakistan has denied that it violated international laws and tortured Captain Kalia, who was 23 when he died.
The young soldier's father, NK Kalia, says that though Pakistan's handling of his son violates the international convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, the Indian government has been apathetic in asking Pakistan for an explanation. He wants the Indian government to raise the matter with the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
In January, Pakistani troops crossed the Line of Control near Jammu and killed two Indian soldiers; the head of one of the corpses had been severed. The vertiginous tension that followed between India and Pakistan was seen as the starkest since the attacks by 10 Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai in 2008, in which 166 people were killed.