Daily Times

More than half of Indian Army personnel are under severe stress and the Indian Army has been losing more personnel every year due to suicides, fratricides and untoward incidents than in response to any enemy, according to the findings of a study by United Service Institution of India (USI), a Service think tank.

More than half of Indian Army personnel seem to be under severe stress and the Army has been losing more personnel every year due to suicides, fratricides and untoward incidents than in response to any enemy or terrorist activities, according to the findings of a study by United Service Institution of India (USI), a Service think tank.

“There has been a significant increase in stress levels amongst Indian Army personnel during approximately last two decades due to operational and non-operational stressors,” one of the findings says. “Prolonged exposure of Indian Army personnel to Counter Insurgency and Counter Terrorism (CI/CT) environment has been one of the contributory factors for increased stress levels,” the study notes.

The research was undertaken during 2019-20 by Col. AK Mor, Senior Research Fellow at the USI, and presented at a webinar titled “Prevailing Stress Levels in Indian Army due to Prolonged Exposure to Counter Insurgency/Counter Terrorism environment”, organised in October 2020 and uploaded on the website on December 07 last.

It is worth mentioning here that 486 Indian troops and police personnel have committed suicide in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir since January 2007.

Experts and analysts say that the level of frustration is very high among the Indian soldiers due to posting for longer period in IIOJK away from family, denial of leaves and insulting behaviour of officers. They maintain that the guilt of killing, arresting, torturing and committing other atrocities on innocent Kashmiris without any reason also leaves deep impacts on the psychology of the Indian forces’ personnel. They further add that the heightened frustration is resulting in the increasing incidents of suicides and fratricide among Indian soldiers in the occupied territory.