Major Nitin Leetul Gogoi, the Indian Army officer who used a Kashmiri man as human shield on his jeep to thwart a stone-pelting mob, on Tuesday said he did that to "save more lives". A video of Dar tied to an army jeep as human shield had gone viral on social media, and was widely condemned. "Then I noticed this man (Farooq Dar) just 30 metre away from my vehicle. Gogoi said he made repeated requests to the crowd, including women and children, to stop stone pelting but they didn't stop. "On April 9, we went to a polling booth to check the security situation, and then some people started hurling stones at us," he said.
As it stated in Back then, a YouTube video showed a man tied to the front of an Indian Army jeep that was being driven around. Gogoi, who serves in the 53 Rashtriya Rifles, a branch of the Indian Army under the Defense Ministry, came under the spotlight in April this year. The Indian Army insisted Dar was hurling stones at army personnel who were boycotting the elections, a claim the man strongly denies. An Indian Army major who tied a man to a jeep and used him as a human shield against a stone-throwing mob in Kashmir has received a military award for his "sustained" efforts in "counter-insurgency" operations, local media report. Earlier, Dar told Amnesty International India that he was traveling to the village of Gampora, in Kashmir, on his motorcycle on April 9.
