WTF?! Family? Since when have ‘militants’ started to kill families of army men? What were they doing travelling with the QRT anyway?
Also, the number of COs KIA is worrying. For anyone to claim that COs and senior officers being killed in operations now (as opposed to not being killed so frequently earlier) is a matter of pride that they have started leading from the front have no clue how the IA operates and how brave the COs have always been.
P.S: For those nitpickers who point out that AR is not really IA and so on, fuck off. It is long overdue that they are given their due of being treated as regular army and given pensions and other privileges, all of which they have well-earned over the course of their 185 years of service to the nation.
And FYI: Manipur goes to polls in March 2022. This kind of unprecedented and disproportional action by secessionists, militants, extremists, and terrorists just when (and where) elections are announced and are going to be held is becoming sickeningly regular, and frankly quite incredulous to the point of being dubious now. I used to pooh-pooh those who saw it as such as conspiracy theorists and losers who are attempting to explain away their losses at the hustings by using the smallest slivers of non-evidence. But this has become so common now that it is almost not news any more. I cannot but be cynical given the history.