Pak sought 48 hrs, we finished job in 8: CDS Chauhan

Pakistan's Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos, which was mounted in response to India's Operation Sindoor, "folded in eight hours" on May 10 belying Islamabad's ambitious target of bringing India to its knees in 48 hours, chief of defence staff General Anil Chauhan said on Tuesday, adding that losses suffered in a military conflict are not as important as the targeted outcome of an operation.

- Nadeem Inamdar and Rahul Singh

"On the 10th of May, at about lam, its (Pakistan's) aim was to get India to its knees in 48 hours. Multiple attacks were launched and... They escalated this conflict...we actually hit only terror targets, but (Pakistan) also (got) into the military domain. From their perspective it would have been rational, in the sense, they would have said you used military means to hit these (terror) targets. But it was also rational on their part that operations, which they thought would continue for 48 hours, folded up in about 8 hours... Then they picked up the telephone and said they wanted to talk," he said. Chauhan made the comments during a special lecture on Future Wars and Warfare, organised by the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).

HT was the first to report on May 24 that the May 10 Pakistani effort lasted just eight hours with Islamabad desperately calling the US to intervene on its behalf for a ceasefire, after four major air strikes by the Indian Air Force (IAF) pulverised airbases, air assets and air defences of the enemy. The decision to fold up operations in eight hours may have stemmed from two things, Chauhan said.

"One, they must have assumed that if they continued, they were likely to lose much more. Hence, they picked up the telephone. And the second thing is that since they had stuck us at multiple fronts, they still did not have the benefit of understanding what they had stuck...So they must have thought that they must have struck and hence it's time to talk. If they didn't, they would lose more," the CDS said.

His comments on the losses during Operation Sindoor come days after his remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where he acknowledged that India had suffered some setbacks.