India has accused Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency of circulating claims that women troops dispatched to its border with Pakistan are in fact prostitutes sent to boost the morale of their frontier guards.
By Dean Nelson in New Delhi
New Delhi's home minister P Chidambaram has ordered his officials to launch an official complaint with Pakistan's High Commission after a Pakistani newspaper reported an investigation alleging that 178 female members of its Border Security Force had been deployed to "meet the natural needs" of its male soldiers on the Line of Control between the two armies in disputed Jammu and Kashmir.
According to the report in the Pakistan Daily Mail earlier this month, New Delhi had "deployed 200 prostitutes" according to its "authoritative sources". It claimed the decision had been taken by senior Army officers who feared a number of troop suicides and incidents where soldiers had killed their own comrades was linked to loneliness and the absence of female company.
In their search for a response they had contacted a number of consultants and analysts who said the soldiers had acted in "acute frustration and depression". They had recommended increased home leave for married soldiers, but could compromise on security by allowing too many to take leave.
The newspaper claimed a major-general was sent to Moscow to research how the Russians had dealt with a similar problem in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "The Russian consultants told the Indian Army that the since the soldiers in the valley were [starved of women], they should be provided with women to meet their genuine and natural needs."
A high-level committee of senior army officers was formed to explore how they could recruit prostitutes and give them basic military training. The newspaper claimed India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing was drafted in to screen the prostitutes because, it said, it already had a "network of prostitutes in different cities of India".
The report which was published on the day the female unit was deployed in Kashmir has been dismissed as a propaganda ploy by Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, the ISI, to demoralise Indian troops.
"It is clearly a story written under a pseudonym, planted by the ISI to demoralise the new women-only contingent. Psychological warfare is not new for the Pakistanis," said a home ministry official.
Jagir Singh, deputy inspector general of the Border Security Force said the claims were an "insult to Indian women".
"These women are aged 19-25 and most of them are from small towns and villages of Punjab. You can imagine the demoralising effect it can have on them," he said.
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