Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat on Friday said that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was controlled by terrorists and not the country’s establishment, PTI reported.

Speaking at the KM Cariappa memorial lecture in New Delhi, Rawat said: “When we say Jammu and Kashmir, the complete state includes PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan. Therefore, PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan became a territory which has been illegally occupied by our western neighbour.”

The Army chief warned Pakistan to not resort to any “misadventure” against India, adding that the Indian armed forces were fully ready to thwart any such attempts. He said attempts were being made by Pakistani terrorists to disrupt the normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir since the revocation of state’s special status.

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“We all have been concerned about Jammu and Kashmir and what has been happening there,” Rawat said. “Jammu and Kashmir has always been part of our great nation.”

“When we introduced it with the word temporary in it, there was no objection from Pakistan on Article 370,” he added. “It has been amended twice, where the leadership of Jammu and Kashmir was designated as Sadar-e-Riyasat and later prime minister and then chief minister.”

He spoke about the recent killings of apple traders in the Valley. “All this narrative is coming from Pakistan and terrorists,” Rawat said. He asserted that Indian armed forces will achieve their mission of peace and development despite the disruptions by Pakistan.

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On Thursday, suspected militants had shot dead two truck drivers transporting apples in Jammu and Kashmir’s Shopian district, and injured another. The attack came over a week after an apple trader from Punjab was shot dead by suspected militants in Shopian. The same day suspected militants gunned down a labourer from Chhattisgarh in Pulwama district. On October 14, a truck driver from Rajasthan was shot dead in Shopian.

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